Special thanks to blokhead for suggesting DBI->trace, which I was unaware of. It turns out that the problem wasn't in the query at all, but in a subsequent query. The reason it would fail on "parent" and work on "id" or "name" is that the latter would result in a different program branch - one that didn't lead to the real error location.

I'd set $dbh->{ShowErrorStatement} = 1, but the error logs were showing the wrong query. I hesitate to suggest an error in the DBI package is more likely than my simply not understanding how it works - maybe someone could shed a bit more light on the issue?

Once again, thanks for the help.
James Beninger

In reply to Solved! by jbeninger
in thread Unexplained MySQL Error by jbeninger

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.