Is it common to write a function to compare all each field fetched to a undef and replace the literal value with "NULL" or such.. Before you print out a value?

You shouldn't have to do that. It should just return NULL automatically.

I might be able to help more if you showed me the code you are working with.

my $name = 'Ben Kittrell';
$name=~s/^(.+)\s(.).+$/\L$1$2/g;
my $nick = 'tha' . $name . 'sta';
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