I'd go with your third option, because it doesn't preclude you from providing the correct answer.

The current version of DBD::Sybase returns -1 for

$rowcount = $dbh->do("select * from TABLE");
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but I jusr verified that a (very) simple change will let it return the correct number of rows.

DBD::Sybase uses it's own implementation of do() to handle multiple result sets, but if DBD::SQLite correctly handles the rows() then you could do something like this:

sub do {
    my($dbh, $statement, $attr, @params) = @_;

    my $sth = $dbh->prepare($statement, $attr) or return undef;
    $sth->execute(@params) or return undef;
    return undef if $sth->err;

    while(my $dat = $sth->fetch) {
        return undef if $sth->err;
    }
    my $rows = $sth->rows;

    ($rows == 0) ? "0E0" : $rows;
}
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Also note the comments by others in this thread that DBI doesn't guarantee that the rowcount is available for SELECT operations, so IMHO you're off the hook :-)

Michael