First, there is the utility bcp that comes with Sybase. You can use that. And if you really want to use Perl and not a seperate process, get yourself sybperl and use Sybase::BCP. The DBI isn't the only interface available to connect to databases, there are more, which don't restrict themselves to common lowest denominator.

-- Abigail

Along with bcp.

That said, I would definitely change this:

$str = $ctr .= $tb .= $total .= $tb .= $sensible .= $tb .= $model .= $
+nl;
[download]

to this:

$str=join($tb,$ctr,$total,$sensible,$model).$nl;
[download]

Or you could get rid of the possibly unnecessary variables and do this:

$str=join("\t",$ctr,$total,$sensible,$model)."\n";
[download]

actually the header function is sth i saw in PHP...like this:

if ($viewreport == "Download")
{
    header( "Content-type: application/x-something" );
    header( "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$type.txt" );
    header( "Content-Description: PHP3 Generated Data" );
[download]

these codes will cause the WIN98 Save As window pops out and i will be able to save the downloaded data as text files..but how can i do this using Perl? }

Sorry, this is rather a comment than an answer. I'd like to come back on your $nl = "\r\n". HTTP specs want you to use CR+LF to end your lines. Your code works fine as long as your webserver runs on Un*x. If you try and run it on a Win32 machine (<troll>but why on earth would you do that? ;-) </troll>), then Perl will helpfully turn your \n into a CR+LF sequence, to adapt to the local custom. And you end up with CR+CR+LF, which is not exactly what you want.

So when dealing with a network protocol where ASCII values are important, \r\n should be written \015\012, be it only for the sake of portability.

--bwana147

"\r\n" and "\015\012" in Perl will be handled the same everywhere except MacOS (and perhaps non-ASCII environments) so this practice is buying you little here. In particular, coding "\n" as "\012" does not stop Win32 from prepending a "\r" to it when output via a file handle that isn't in binmode.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")