For the 3rd question, you want to assign to different hash elements the values of a list? You can use a counter (and take care of missing values with an ||):

if ( @row ) {
    my $counter = 0;
    $q->param(
        map { $_ => $row[$counter++] || '' } qw/mid name realname emai
+l/
    );
}
[download]

Don't know if it's more legible though.

--bwana147