The sub my_excer does actually return @retval which contains the values from $itm. Your debugging print statements do not demonstrate this. Nor do you show the subs() method which you pass @retval to - this is probably where your problem lies as you seem to have enough print statements in your code to demonstrate that you are getting what you expect just before the return @retval. BTW you do not need to use prototypes for your subs the way you do. With $item you are passing a reference to a reference which is unnecessary and you then have to dereference it which make your code less clear.

    else
        {
        my $id = $$item->id;
            print "printing the item id\n";
        print "$id\n";
        $SQL = qq[SELECT u.puid, up.prod_id FROM users u, user_product
+s up 
              WHERE ((u.puid = up.puid) AND (u.parent_puid = $id)
              AND (up.from_date < SYSDATE) 
              AND (up.to_date IS NULL OR up.to_date > SYSDATE))];
    }



    
        my @RETVAL = my_execer($SQL);
        print "Hey I got something back!" if $#RETVAL > 0;
        print 'I got this back\n", Dumper(\@RETVAL);
        ${$item}->subs(@RETVAL); # <-- here is problem I think
        print Dumper $$item;


       
        foreach my $subitem ($$item->subs)
    {
        find_subs(\$subitem);
    }

    return $item;
[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print