Okay, I just tried that, and now instead of printing it nonstop it just prints the same error once, followed by an uninformative "1", then exits. Not sure what to make of that.
Comment on Re^2: Can't execute statements with DBD::Oracle
No idea, and I don't see how that "1" is possible. How can the program print anything after it exited? (A print in the destructor of an object that gets destroyed during global destruction could do it, but you think DBI's objects wouldn't do that.)