The LDAP protocol allows to specify a subset of attributes to retrieve in the search method.

Net::LDAP supports that feature via the attrs parameter. For instance:

$mesg = $ldap->search(
                       base   => "o=acme.com",
                       scope  => 'sub',
                       filter => "sn=smith",
                       attrs  => [qw(sn givenName department)]
                      );
[download]