note Anonymous Monk <p>And what does your query produce when run straight against the database with an SQL command prompt?</p> <p>How many records are there in the database that begin with <c>'$name'</c>? Does <c>fetchrow_array</c> return false? (If so, your resultset is zero rows.)</p> <p>Also, I'm quite confused by the query. Do you have fields that are named <c>$$$</c>? (Double quotes are meant to quote table and field names in the SQL dialects I'm familiar with.)</p> <p>Perhaps you mean:</p> <code> my $sql = sprintf("... where CustomField = ? and Name like %s", $dbh->quote($name . '%')); $agent1 = $dbh->prepare($sql) || die $DBI::errstr; $Agent1->execute(291) || die $DBI::errstr ; ( $phone_no,$mail )= $Agent1->fetchrow_array or die "no results :("; </code> <p>May I recommend you put RaiseError into your connection string? Less explicit dying.</p> 1008099 1008099 2