I need to return the first x rows of a 'select' statement

The most obvious way is to put a 'LIMIT x' in your SELECT.

But if for some reason you can't do that, then use something like:

my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$sth->execute;
$sth->bind_columns(\my ($col1, $col2 ... $coln));
my $count = 0;
while ($sth->fetch) {
  [$col1 .. $coln will be populated with the values in that row]
  last if ++$count == 10;
}
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Tony

In case you're using Oracle: you don't have a LIMIT SQL command (go figure), so you need to use ROWNUM instead:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE ROWNUM < 10;
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Sybase doesn't have either of those mechanisms. You need to do it in two steps.

set rowcount 10
select * from table
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--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

If you never want to see more than just 10 rows, you might consider just adding a limit to your query.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use DBI;
$dbh = DBI->connect( #your database info here# );
$sth = $dbh->prepare( "SELECT * FROM table_name LIMIT x" );   # prepar
+es a query to send to DB where 'x' is the number of rows you want ret
+urned
$sth->execute();   # execute the query against the db

while ( ($col1, $col2) = $sth->fetchrow_array() ) {
     # code
     # code
     # code....etc.
}
$sth->finish();
$dbh->disconnect();
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