I suspect you want  die "couldn't connect!!!: " . DBI->errstr not $DBI::errstr. That is, it's a function, not a string. use strict doesn't catch those when you change namespace like that. Although, the documentation for DBI clearly shows $DBI::errstr, so who knows. Personally, I use the function and don't get any warnings.

UPDATE: ikegami, yes, I said that the example shows $DBI::errstr. No need to point it out again. What I was saying is that using the function also works and avoids the warning. In fact the function really just returns the scalar, so it's a silly thing to argue about anyway.

And if you're curious, they haven't updated the docs yet, but there's been a todo item about it for like 8 years: 

# Help people doing DBI->errstr, might even document it one day
# XXX probably best moved to cheaper XS code
sub err    { $DBI::err    }
sub errstr { $DBI::errstr }

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-Paul

In reply to Re: $DBI::errstr is always undef by jettero
in thread $DBI::errstr is always undef by spivey3587

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