We cannot see much from your example as you omitted the SQL. However, I don't think you should be passing undef to bind_columns as the first argument as bind_columns as defined like this http://search.cpan.org/~timb/DBI-1.607/DBI.pm#bind_columns and takes a list of references. If you are selecting 3 columns you need to bind with 3 references. Your example is also missing an execute call and according to the DBI docs you should bind your columns after execute.