I was just trying to get at 2 fields and change the data without having to create a new object. Which I did anyway...
I alway use strict. Yes it throws errors which just told me I wasn't accessing the structure right. But I already knew that. :)
References eat my lunch anyway. I use objects to dodge them to avoid @{}->[]->{} crap. So when I have to work with them(refs) I am always lost.
my solution was as follows
$Query_Statement="select fname,lname,address,city,state,zip,phone,emai
+l FROM main order by lname,fname;";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($Query_Statement);
$sth->execute();
my @array;
my $dataObjRef = \@array;
while( my $array_ref = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref){
#print ">>@$array_ref\n";
my $fname = $array_ref->[0];
my $lname = $array_ref->[1];
my $total += length($fname);
my $total += length($lname);
if ((length($fname) + length($lname)) > 18){
my $Fintial = substr($fname,0,1);
if ((length($Fintial) + length($lname)) > 18){
$lname = substr($lname,0,16);
}
$array_ref->[0] = $Fintial;
$array_ref->[1] = $lname;
#print "$Fintial $lname\n";
}
else{
next;
}
my @newArray = @$array_ref;
push(@$dataObjRef, \@newArray);
}
$sth->finish();
$dbh->disconnect or warn "Disconnection failed: $DBI::errstr\n";
return $dataObjRef;
}