I think you may be rather confused. Although I do not use Sybase or DBD::Sybase I assume sp_helptext is similar in Sybase as to what it is now in SQL Server. Firstly it is a procedure, not a function, secondly it does not return the definition that is used to create an object in multiple rows but a result-set and finally the argument to it is the object you are enquiring about. i.e., you do something like:

prepare(q/exec sp_helptext(?)/);
execute('my_object_name');
while(@data = fetchrow_array) {
    print join(q{,}, @data) . "\n";
}

[download]

sp_helptext creates a result-set which you can retrieve by calling fetch (fetchrow/fetchrow_arrayref etc) on the statement handle. However, you should be aware that SQL Server (which I imagine is similar to Sybase) does not return output parameters until the procedure has completed and that means you must have retrieved all result-sets and usually means calling more_results (see http://search.cpan.org/~mewp/DBD-Sybase-1.09/Sybase.pm#Handling_Multiple_Result_Sets and http://search.cpan.org/~mewp/DBD-Sybase-1.09/Sybase.pm#Calling_Stored_Procedures.

In reply to Re: Perl db programming by mje
in thread Perl db programming by rmatil

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