I have the most odd problem with a piece of code connecting to an oracle database, it goes like this: 
getData{
$sql = shift;


my ($total_cols) = $dbh->selectrow_array($sql) or die($dbh->errstr);

...

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doesn't work, gives me DBD::Oracle::db selectrow_array failed: ORA-00900: invalid SQL statement (DBD ERROR: OCIStmtExecute) but.. should I take an exact copy of the string $sql (I've even done an ascii comparison on it) and set it inside the subroutine, it works perfectly well, i.e: 
getData{
$sql = shift;
$sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) etc blah blah";

my ($total_cols) = $dbh->selectrow_array($sql) or die($dbh->errstr);

...

[download]
its driving me mad.. help!

In reply to when is a string not a string? by purge

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