I should have added more detail to the question. Imagine this trigger

CREATE TRIGGER bar AFTER INSERT ON foo
FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
  DECLARE x INT;
  SET x = NEW.i;
  SET @a = x; -- set user variable outside trigger

END//
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I would need to be able to perform the following in perl

SET @a = 0;

SELECT @a;
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Can i perform a select @a using the standard dbi methods? What would i use to issue the SET command. Could i just use a sth execute call? I will look at this now. By asking the question I have helped myself answer it i think