You can't use placeholders that way. MySQL can't parse a statement like "delete from ?", so you can't prepare it. You are pretty much stuck with "delete from $row[0]".

Thanks. So would this work instead?

my $query = $dbh->prepare('SHOW TABLES');
    if (defined($query)) {
        $query->execute();
        my @row;
        while (@row = $query->fetchrow_array()) {
                    $sql = qq|delete from $row[0]|;
            $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql) 
                    or die "Cannot prepare: " .  
                    $dbh->errstr();
            $sth->execute() or die "" . $sth->errstr();
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it is a huge database and just for testing purposes, so speed isn't a concern, because everytime it runs, it still takes about 2 hours to run.

In that case, dropping the database and recreating it is most likely the fastest solution. Database drops in PostgreSQL and MySQL/MariaDB are almost instant. In Oracle it takes ages to (re)create a database.

To get all tables, why not use the DBI::tables? That way you don't have to dig into database specific calls.

If you still want to delete in stead of re-create, why use a prepare/execute combo instead of just do?

    $dbh->do ("truncate table $_") for $dbh->tables (undef, undef, undef, "TABLE");

or

    $dbh->do ("delete   from  $_") for $dbh->tables (undef, undef, undef, "TABLE");

In other databases, you could use delete from table cascade, but iirc that syntax is not supported by mysql where you'd have to create the table to know about cascading deletes.


Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

I would try doing this:

my $sqlString = 'delete from %s;';

$dbh->begin_work;
my @tables = ('table1','table2','table3');
foreach my $table (@tables) {
    my $sth = sprintf($sqlString, $table);
    $dbh->do( $dth );
}
$dbh->commit;
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This would speed it up some, but double-check the DBI doco on cpan for the 'begin_work' function before you do it on how it will react since I think it depends on the database you use and whether it supports transactions or not.

The last thing you could try could be a drop/create where you basically drop the old table and re-create it from scratch... That will definately speed it up, but some people get twitchy when doing it :)
Something like

$dth->do("drop table0");
$dth->do("create table0 ( col1 def, col2 def.....)");
etc....
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