Note that fetching hashrefs is (much) slower than fetching arrayrefs. Most often this is marginal compared to the time spent in getting the data from the database, but in many cases, you can bring the speed back by using bind_columns:

my $sth = $dbh->prepare ("select * from foo");
$sth->execute;
my (@fields, %r) = @{$sth->{NAME_lc}};
$sth->bind_columns (\@r{@fields});
while ($sth->fetch) {
    # Do something with the record. Fields are stored in %r
    printf "%-16s: %s\n", $_, $r{$_} // "--undef--" for @fields;
    }
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