in reply to Perl CGI and SQL statements

Mr. Muskrat explained that: 
$db = new Win32::ODBC("$DSN"),

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needed to be: 
$db = new Win32::ODBC("$DSN");

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You've posted the code again with the same error. You could at least fix that bit.

use diagnostics; can be very useful. But if you have many errors it can be a bit overwhelming! I would comment it out while you eliminate the obvious errors. I added use warnings; added my to a few variable declarations and was able to get the thing to compile. Which is a start. Difficult to help you much more because of your data source.

Hope that helps.

Update:

$cgi->p("$dept was received."),

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should be: 
$cgi->p("$dept was received.");

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Re^2: Perl CGI and SQL statements
by kjg (Sexton) on Apr 19, 2006 at 09:30 UTC
    Um, looking above that is a ';' not a ',' so now I'm a bit perplexed.

    I don't have 'use warnings' in my perl installation :(

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      It was the line before it. See my updated post.

      If your perl is earlier than 5.6.x add  -w to the end of the shebang line.

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[d/l]
      Right I've commented everything out and found that the problem seems to hinge on my IF statement. This is my code now: 
      use strict;
use diagnostics;

use CGI qw(:standard);
use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/;

use Win32::ODBC;
use lib '/perlcgi/settings';
require 'settings.pl';  # Included configuration file which contains g
+lobal variables

my %labels = (
    MA    => 'Mortgage Advisers',
    CA    => 'Customer Advisers',
    BM    => 'Branch Management',
    HO    => 'Head Office',
    Acc    => 'Accord',
    MSa    => 'MCC Sales',
    MSe    => 'MCC Service',
);

my $cgi    = CGI->new;
my $dept    = $cgi->param('department');
my $folderday = '19Apr';
my $SqlStatement ='SELECT * FROM Pipeline WHERE Publish<="$today" AND 
+Expiry>="$today" AND CA="Must Read"';
my $today = '19 Apr 2006';

print $cgi->header('text/html');


if (defined $dept) {
    if (exists $labels{$dept}) {
        # FIXME
        # untaint $dept and put it into database
        print
            $cgi->start_html,
            $cgi->p("$dept was received."),
            if ($dept ='CA'){
          } # end of IF CA=
            $cgi->end_html;

    } else {
        print
            $cgi->start_html,
            $cgi->p("$dept was received, but is not a valid department
+ name."),
            $cgi->end_html;
    };
} else {
    print
        $cgi->start_html,
        $cgi->start_form(
            -action    => $cgi->script_name,
        ),
        $cgi->popup_menu(
            -name        => 'department',
            -values        => [keys %labels],
            -labels        => \%labels,
        ),
        $cgi->submit,
        $cgi->end_form,
        $cgi->end_html;
};

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      The error message says there are compilation errors and syntax errors at this bracket:

      } # end of IF CA=

      but I think it doesn't like:

      if ($dept ='CA'){

      What's wrong with that?

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[d/l]
        if ($dept='CA') is an assignment, not a comparisson. In addition you should use 'eq' for a texual comparison (== for numeric). So:
        if ($dept eq 'CA')
        is the way to go.
        HOWEVER, you have an imbedded 'if' inside a print staement, which is the reason for the syntax error. I suggest you break it up into two print statements.
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        $cgi->p("$dept was received."),

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        Change the comma to a ;

        Also: 

        if ($dept eq'CA'){

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        is better than: 
        if ($dept ='CA'){

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        If you had warnings (-w) enabled that would have been flagged up too.

        Update: == corrected to eq as pointed out by cdarke below

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[d/l]
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