third party databases and perl

i would like to know what is needed for perl to 1) interface with any third party database but mainly 2) interface with progress. now, i'm not worried about getting a tutorial- just a way to start... (tried using google and CPAN but haven't been able to get good results (probably my lack o

reference to an array

drieux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> has kindly answered my question about $/ to change the way a loop parses text but his answer uses stuff which i am not familiar with yet: drieux wrote... b) you might want to pass in a reference to the array - and fill it up pus

not using \n as delimiter with while loop

goodmorning (or evening, or what have you) ok. here's my snippet of code: sub get_list{ my($inputfilehandal)=@_; open (IN,"$inputfilehandal"); while(){ #if i could seperate each instance of IN with #something other than /n push(@firstarray,$_);} close (IN); }