my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:ODBC:test1.mdb')
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT something FROM table")
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO table VALUES (value1, value2, val
+ue3)")

# rest of program down here
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Can I use something other than sth?

Yes, of course you can. $sth is just a variable name that's generally used in DBI examples. You can use anything you like :)

Just a couple of other quick pointers that may save you some grief further down the track:

• try to get into the habit of always checking the return values of your DBI calls. The general way to do this is:

  my $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI::ODBC ... etc $dsn") 
      or die("Couldn't connect to $dsn: $DBI::errstr\n");
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• another good habit to get into is to use placeholders wherever you can. This a safer method and ensures that your strings will always be properly quoted. For example, instead of:

  my $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO table VALUES (value1, value2, val
  +ue3)");
  [download]

  You would do:

  my $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO table VALUES (?, ?, ?)");
  [download]

  and then later...

  $sth->execute($foo, $bar, $baz);
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You'll find plenty of examples of this and lots more information in the links I gave you earlier.

Cheers,
Darren :)

yes, you can use something other than 'sth' .. that's just the common default/example variable name for a STatement Handle ..

my $sth_ins = $dbh->prepare("INSERT ....");
my $sth_sel = $dbh->prepare("SELECT ....");
...
$sth_ins->execute();
...
$sth_sel->execute();
while( my $row = $sth_sel->fetchrow_arrayref() ){
  ...
}
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Thanks David, I'll give that a shot and see how it goes. I figured it would be something simple. I'll be glad when I'm comfortable enough with perl to deal with stuff like this without asking.

Thanks for the replies, gentlemen. Now I've pretty much mangled the code but it almost works. The only problem is that the insert statement is inserting a blank row each time with no data in each column. The insert code i'm using is:

my $sth_ins = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO users (firstname, lastname, s
+tate, country) VALUES (?, ?, ? ,?)") or die "Couldn't insert the data
+";
$sth_ins->execute($FORM{firstname}, $FORM{lastname}, $FORM{state}, $FO
+RM{country});
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I was talking about this problem with a friend of mine who is vaguely familiar with Perl and he mentioned that $FORM{value} was the only way to retrieve the data from

read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
@pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
foreach $pair (@pairs) {
    ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
    $value =~ tr/+/ /;
    $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
    $FORM{$name} = $value;
}
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Is there another way to do it or am I just overlooking something the way it is now?