my @columns = qw( id account_number the_date); 
my $sql = "select id, account_number, CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),date,101) as
+ the_date from my_table where id <> '' order by date desc";
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This is pretty off-topic, but you can indeed use column labels with spaces or other special characters, as long as they are quoted.

So

select foo as 'this is the label' from bar
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is perfectly valid, and DBD::Sybase will set the column name to 'this is the label'.

Michael

Thanks. That is good to know.

I know, but my question was in regards of this situation:
How would I pass " CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),date,101)" to the names of columns. From this code:

...
my $sql  = "select id, account_number, CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),date,101) a
+s date
                from my_table where id <>''
                order by date desc";

my @columns = qw( id account_number box );

my $results = $self->_all_data($sql, \@columns);
...
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To this:

...
my @columns = qw( id account_number date );

my $sql  = "select ".join( ",", @columns).
                " from my_table where id <>''
                order by date desc";

my $results = $self->_all_data($sql, \@columns);
...
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You cannot. My proposal only works for simple column names. Do you really need to pass the columns names? Can you not use

my $rs = $sth->fetchall_arrayref({});
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without specifying the columns? According to the documentation it should work but I do not have your database to test it. This way everything would be controlled by your sql only.