You are quoting your strings twice. You use both q{} and "". So the command that's being send is 
    "UPDATE my_table SET MY_COLUMN = '' WHERE MY_OTHER_COLMN = 'my_val
+ue'"

[download]
including your quotes.

I'm a bit amazed it doesn't complain about the SELECT, where you make the same error.

In reply to Re: MySQL "Update" statement is failing with syntax error by JavaFan
in thread MySQL "Update" statement is failing with syntax error by carpediem

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