cdherold,

The DBI module comes with a method to do just this type of quoting that you are looking for. For instance:

$trend="<img src='images/down.jpg'>";

my $qtrend = $dbh->quote($trend);
my $qticker = $dbh->quote($ticker);

$sth_2 = $dbh->prepare("UPDATE options SET trend=$qtrend WHERE ticker 
+= $qticker");
$sth_2->execute();
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It also isn't necessary to put a ';' in the prepare statement. If you check out this chapter from the O'Reilly Perl DBI reference and search for 'quotes', it will discuss escaping them.