mixed insert... ?

hello list,

  i'm hoping someone can enlighten me on the best way to do an insert.  i am
creating a little user database that looks something like this:

CREATE TABLE ftpclients (
        clientid serial primary key,
        foldernumber int,
        loginname varchar(32),
        createdate date,
        activedate date,
        expiredate date,
        quota int,
        active boolean,
        billbydate boolean,
        passwd varchar(32)
);

and i'd like to log any changes to the ftpclients table (above) in a second
table like this:

CREATE TABLE clhistory (
        clientid int,
        entry text,
        moddate date,
        FOREIGN KEY (clientid) REFERENCES ftpclients
);

i'm writing a script in perl that will fetch the appropriate data and perform
these inserts, but i'm having trouble inserting into the clhistory table
because i need to insert two fields from the ftpclients table (clientid, and
createdate), but also a third value that comes from the script that runs the
query (so i can't use:

INSERT into ... SELECT...;

directly).  right now, i see my options as (some perl'isms):

1 - $result=SELECT clientid from ftpclients WHERE
loginname=$client{loginname};
    INSERT INTO clhistory VALUES ($result, $entry, $createdate);

2 - store the most recent comment in the ftpclients table, which would allow
an
    INSERT ... SELECT;

ideally, i'd like to insert into the clhistory table a comment with a
clientid value that matches the desired loginname from the ftpclients table.
am i on the right track, or is there an entirely better way to handle this?

thanks,
  twkonefal

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