... Next morning ...
A thousand pardons dear Monks.

In my application I have batches of data that can be added from time to time. When I run my code I don't know for sure if a batch currently exists. Because of this my SQL statement (including a lot of WHERE stuff) will be expected to return a NULL from time to time. Thus I used a simple "foolproof" way of testing for a null return. ... Yes, you guessed it, my "foolproof" code was actually "foolish" code. Let's just label it an "Intro to Computing 101, week #1 error" and let it fade away.

BUT, that leaves me with my current "foolproof code".

my $found_something = 0;

while (@val = $sth -> fetchrow_array())
{
      # useful database code goes here
      $found_something = 1;
}

if ($found_something == 0)
{
      # "graceful" found nothing code goes here
}

This should work, but it has a bit of a "bailing wire and chewing gum" look to it. Is there a cleaner way to do it?

Thanks for the help and sorry for error on my part.

Bruce

In reply to Re^3: DBI SUM function by Bruce32903
in thread DBI SUM function by Bruce32903

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.