'0E0' is zero in scientific notation (ie: 0 * 10^0) but it's special in Perl because in a boolean context it evaluates to True (whereas 0 would obviously be false). This allows you to do something like ...

 $dbh->do($sql) or die "Update failed"

... and it would not call die even if no rows were affected.

In practice though when you're using DBI it's simpler and safer to enable RaiseError and use eval to catch the errors.

In reply to Re^3: Odd "rows affected" values using DBI on MySQL by grantm
in thread Odd "rows affected" values using DBI on MySQL by LassiLantar

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