Thanks for idea, it is the solution, but:

With catch and croak you have to take care of context (AFAIK), something like this:

    sub selectrow_array {
        my $this = shift();
        my ( @ret, $ret );
        eval {
            if (wantarray)
            {

                # list
                @ret = $this->SUPER::selectrow_array(@_);
            }
            elsif ( defined(wantarray) ) {

                # scalar
                $ret = $this->SUPER::selectrow_array(@_);
            }
            else {

                # void - nonsense
                $this->SUPER::selectrow_array(@_);

            }
        };
        croak $@ if $@;
        return   if !defined wantarray;
        return wantarray ? @ret : $ret;
    }
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The original error line is still being reported. Of course you can strip it with RE. But with $dbh->{'PrintError'} set the line still appear.

DBD::mysql::db selectrow_array failed: Table 'devel.no_such_table' doe
+sn't exist at simple.pl line 17.
DBD::mysql::db selectrow_array failed: Table 'devel.no_such_table' doe
+sn't exist at simple.pl line 17.
 at simple.pl line 43
[download]

DBI actually "croaks" for itself. The error is reported on the boundary of user and DBI code. What I want is to tell DBI: this code is safe, don't report errors from here, go up in stack. I dont' know whether DBI has some rules for telling whether a call shouldn't generate errors as Carp have (inheritance is one the rules).

Maybe that the elegant, DBI specific solution, doesn't exist.