They are not the same thing, though.

Not only fetchrow_hashref will be slower, because the names are assigned for each row, while $sth->{NAME} is only evaluated once, after the call to "execute," but in addition, if your query contains two columns with the same name, $sth->{NAME} will handle it, but fetchrow_hashref will not.

select * from dept; select * from emp;
+--------+----------+
| deptID | name     |
+--------+----------+
|      1 | pers     |
|      2 | sales    |
|      3 | research |
+--------+----------+

+-------+-------+--------+
| empID | name  | deptID |
+-------+-------+--------+
|     1 | John  |      1 |
|     2 | Fred  |      2 |
|     3 | Susan |      2 |
+-------+-------+--------+

select distinct dept.deptID, emp.deptID 
    from dept left join emp using(deptID);
+--------+--------+
| deptID | deptID |
+--------+--------+
|      1 |      1 |
|      2 |      2 |
|      3 |   NULL |
+--------+--------+
[download]

Given these tables, the Perl code to handle them could be:

my $query = qq{select distinct dept.deptID, emp.deptID 
    from dept left join emp using(deptID)};

my $sth = $dbh->prepare($query);

$sth->execute();
print "--- names\n";
print join ", ", @{$sth->{NAME}};

print "\n--- fetchrow_hashref\n";
my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref();
print "$_ \t" for keys %$row;
print "\n";
$sth->finish();

__OUTPUT__

--- names
deptID, deptID
--- fetchrow_hashref
deptID
[download]

Notice that $sth->{NAME}, despite the double names, returns the correct result. fetchrow_hashref, instead, misses one column altogether.

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