Do I need to hack LD_LIBRARY_PATH?

Yes, that would be one way to fix the problem.  But note that you typically have to set it before the script is executed. I.e., setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH from within a BEGIN block may not be enough.  Either set it in a shell wrapper that then execs the Perl script, or re-exec the Perl script from within the BEGIN block (see (tye)Re: programatically setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH).

FreeTDS has major drawbacks, it's usually better to download the free ASE Express Edition which includes the Sybase Client libs.

You may need to set the SYBASE environment variable (and maybe even others). ASE creates a ASE150.sh file during installation which sets all required variables.

Would you care to elaborate on major drawbacks? I've used freetds quite successfully for both perl and ruby projects and have yet to run into any real issues (but then again maybe my problem domain is not very taxing). Also, rather than mucking with LD_LIBRARY_PATH, most *nix distributions use something like ldconfig to set where the loader finds it's libs. If being a sybase client is the core functionality of the box, I would use ldconfig before I started wrapping every client app in a LD_LIBRARY_PATH wrapper.

-derby

I'm not using the current version, but it doesn't have placeholder support, can't use varchar or text columns longer than ~255 chars and it feels like error messages are clearer using OpenClient.

---

Try out Padre - the free Perl IDE and visit my blog's Perl section.

Thanks, and excuse the double post.

The problem vanished after adding this to /etc/profile:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib