I believe the sock in this context is actually the port number specified in the connect() call, and not the socket used to communicate. Even while trying to debug, I must be doing something stupid. Here's what I'm doing:

$dbh = &db_connect;
print "hi there 3\n";
#my $p = $dbh->sock;
#my $h = $dbh->host;
#my $d = $dbh->database;
#print "port: p\nhost: $h\ndb  : $d\n";
print "dbh: $dbh\n";
use Data::Dumper;
Data::Dumper->Dump([$dbh]);
foreach ( keys %$dbh) { print "$_=$dbh{$_}\n"; }
print "got here\n";
[download]

And here's what I get:

hi there 3
dbh: DBI::db=HASH(0x3de72b0)
got here
[download]

a) Its telling me that $dbh is a hash, but why can't I print out its contents?

b)The 4 lines are commented out, because if I leave them in, the application dies silently.