Re^2: Extracting only required length in a column in perl DBI

[Thomas Kennll]

Tux,

while (my ($ans_rid, $ans_qcn, $ans_loc) = $sth->fetchrow_array ()) {
    my ($ansb_cktid, $ansb_mcn, $ansb_soc) = unpack "A3 A3 A3", $ans_l
+oc;

This unpacks only the 3rd column ie, $ans_loc... I wanted to unpack all the 3 columns..ie, $ans_rid, $ans_qcn, $ans_loc and have the values stored in $ansb_cktid, $ansb_mcn, $ansb_soc..

[sth]

Then you need to unpack all 3, you can't unpack three variables at once AFAIK. The "A3 A3 A6" is a format for unpacking one variable, as Tux showed in the example. You could just used substrings,

$ans_rid = substr($ans_rid, 0, 3);
$ans_qcn = substr($ans_qcn, 0, 3);
$ans_loc = substr($ans_loc, 0, 6);

..or make new variables for each substr() leaving the original variable intact.