I am a newbie here with perl. I see what you guys are offering, but I don't grasp how to implement that within my script. Can you take my script and then paste exactly where it needs to be? Then maybe explain what I am missing. Thanks for being nice! I am trying to learn as I go.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use POSIX qw(strftime);
use FileHandle;
use Getopt::Long;
use IO::Handle;
$MYSQL='/pathtomysql/mysql';

# Doing the following to get the date into consistent format
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(t
+ime);
$year += 1900;
my @moname = qw( 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 09 10 11 12 );
my $datestring = "$year.$moname[$mon]$mday.$hour$min.$sec";
my ($dbh,$CONTAINER,$DEBUG,$DOMAIN,$DOMTYPE,$USER,$PASSWORD,$USAGE);

$Getopt::Long::autoabbrev=1;
&GetOptions('-zdebug'=>\$DEBUG,'container:s'=>\$CONTAINER,'-user:s'=>\
+$USER,'-password:s'=>\$PASSWORD,'-x'=>\$USAGE,'v'=>\$VERSION);

if ($VERSION) {
   print "Version 1.0 Build date: 23 May 2012 \n";
   exit;
}

if (! $CONTAINER) {
   print "missing container: $CONTAINER \n";
   &usage;
}

if (! $USER) {
   print "missing user: $USER\n";
   &usage;
}

if (! $PASSWORD) {
   print "missing password: $PASSWORD\n";
   &usage;
}

if ($USAGE) {
   &usage;
}
print "container: $CONTAINER \n" if $DEBUG;

# This is converting it to all uppercase
$CONTAINER =~ tr/a-z/A-Z/;

my $TMPSQLCONT="/tmp/sql.$datestring";
my $TMPCONTLIST="/tmp/sql.contlist.$datestring";

# Getting the container ID's for the subnets that we want to get data 
+on
  $SQLCONT="select user_defined_fld_value.objectid, inet_ntoa(block.ST
+ARTADDR), 
user_defined_fld.tag, user_defined_fld_value.VALUE 
from user_defined_fld_value 
left join user_defined_fld 
on user_defined_fld_value.USER_DEFINED_FLD_ID=user_defined_fld.id 
left join container_block 
on container_block.blockid=user_defined_fld_value.objectid 
left join block 
on block.id=container_block.blockid 
left join container 
on container.id=container_block.containerid 
where container.notes like '%$CONTAINER%'";

    my $tmpcont=FileHandle->new;
    $tmpcont->open(">$TMPSQLCONT");
    print $tmpcont "$SQLCONT;\n";
    $tmpcont->close;
    system("$MYSQL -u $USER -p$PASSWORD instancename <$TMPSQLCONT > $T
+MPCONTLIST");

######################################################################
+###
sub usage {
   print "Usage: \n";
   print "      -c:  Container \n";
   print "      -u:  login \n";
   print "      -p:  password\n";
   print "      -z:  debug \n";
   print "      -x:  This message \n";
   exit 0;
}
######################################################################
+###
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