Thanks for the tip. I found an obscure reference to fetchrow_arrayref where the person was getting the same error I was, but couldn't figure out why. The reply was something to the effect that fetchrow_arrayref has "issues," and to not use it.

So I changed it to fetchrow_hashref (which is the version I normally used, anyway). I did the copy/paste routine with the code I was using until I figured out what it was really doing.

Anyway, what I discovered is that:

        my $sth2 = $dbh->prepare("SHOW FULL COLUMNS IN ?") or die 'pre
+pare failed';
        $sth2->execute($table) or die 'execute failed [' . $sth2->err 
+. '] [' . $sth2->errstr . ']';
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dies with a syntax error. And that:

        my $sth2 = $dbh->prepare("SHOW FULL COLUMNS IN $table") or die
+ 'prepare failed';
        $sth2->execute() or die 'execute failed [' . $sth2->err . '] [
+' . $sth2->errstr . ']';
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does not die, but also does not return any rows of data.

If you want to keep using placeholders, consider the Catalog Methods of DBI.

No, you can't use a placeholder for a table name - see recent node DBI order by clause and placeholders.

This works for me on MySQL
$dbh->prepare("SHOW FULL COLUMNS IN $table")
How are you retrieving records ?
poj

After working through a number of typos, I am getting closer. I agree, however, that the command works perfectly in MySQL. The issue is translating it to a DBI command. For my test, the MySQL command returns:

mysql> show columns in cmsParms;
+--------+-----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field  | Type      | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------+-----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| pKey   | char(100) | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| pValue | text      | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
+--------+-----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
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From inside my code:

my $rval = 'rval (' . $table . ')';
my $sth2 = $dbh->prepare("SHOW COLUMNS IN $table where Field=?")
    or die 'prepare failed';
$sth2->execute( $field )
    or die 'execute failed';
if ( $sth2->err )
    { $rval .= 'error: [' . $sth2->errmsg . ']'; }
else
    {
    $rval .= '(' . $sth2->rows . ')';
    my ($arr, @arr, %arr, $field);
    while ( $arr = $sth2->fetchrow_hashref )
        {
        foreach $field ( keys %{ $arr } )
            {
            $rval .= "[".$field.":".$arr->{ $field }."]";
            }
        }
    }

return($rval);
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What now is returned ($rval) is:

[rval (cmsParms)(1)[Extra:][Type:char(100)][Field:pKey][Default:][Null
+:NO][Key:PRI]]
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This is exactly what I expected! Changes I made:

• I fixed a couple of (important) typos.
• I added "where Field=?" to the prepare, and $field in the execute, so it only returns the info for the one entry.

Thanks for your help!

Lee Crites
lee@critesclan.com