Handle MySQL BIT data type in Perl

[pg]

In MySQL database, I created a table test, with only one column called a, and the type for a is BIT(3).

From MySQL command interface, I tried:

insert into test(a) value(3)

It works fine.

When I did from Perl with:

use DBI;
use Data::Dumper;
use strict;
use warnings;
my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=test;host=foo";
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, 'root', 'root', {RaiseError => 1});
my $insert = "insert into test(a) value(3)";
my $select = "select * from test";
my $insert_st = $dbh->prepare($insert);
my $select_st = $dbh->prepare($select);
$insert_st->execute() or die $dbh->errstr;
$select_st->execute();

my $ref = $select_st->fetchall_arrayref();

print Dumper($ref);

It also worked. But when I tried to do it with placeholder:

use DBI;
use Data::Dumper;
use strict;
use warnings;
my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=test;host=foo";
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, 'root', 'root', {RaiseError => 1});
my $insert = "insert into test(a) value(?)";
my $select = "select * from test";
my $insert_st = $dbh->prepare($insert);
my $select_st = $dbh->prepare($select);
$insert_st->execute(3) or die $dbh->errstr;
$select_st->execute();

my $ref = $select_st->fetchall_arrayref();

print Dumper($ref);

It fails with:

DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Data too long for column 'a' at row 1 a
+t math1.pl
 line 11.
DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Data too long for column 'a' at row 1 a
+t math1.pl
 line 11.

Looks like that the placeholder was not properly handled (data type was not correctly understood), so I played a bit and found a workaround:

use DBI;
use Data::Dumper;
use strict;
use warnings;
my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=test;host=foo";
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, 'root', 'root', {RaiseError => 1});
my $insert = "insert into test(a) value(?)";
my $select = "select * from test";
my $insert_st = $dbh->prepare($insert);
my $select_st = $dbh->prepare($select);
$insert_st->execute(pack('b3', '110')) or die $dbh->errstr;
$select_st->execute();

my $ref = $select_st->fetchall_arrayref();

print Dumper($ref);

That worked fine.

Is there any way that's more obvious with the placeholder? I don't really care the pack part, there are different ways to pack. But ideally the placeholder (DBI/DBD)should be self-sufficient, or at least allow me to indicate data type.