Need help escaping literal string

[mrras25]

I have a sql query in perl that returns a column which could hold anything in it $#%@^"!_'/ and the string could be a long string and no telling where these specail characters will be placed in the string - I need to escape these characters before taking that string and inserting it back into the database.. </>

Please help - Thank you

[davido]

DBI Placeholders and Bind Values.

Placeholders and bind values are safer than trying to escape the dangerous characters when constructing a query.

[mrras25]

Thank you for the reply

How exactly would I do it? Lets say I have a value of

while(@values = $sth->fetchrow_array) {
   print "$values[8]\n";
}

the return value of that is : /vol/enycmmcfl01b_ssd2_home_1b_a/CBirbigl$'s as you can see if I try and take that value and insert in to an insert statement to execute that through perl

my $insert = "insert into dbtable (vol) values ('$values[8]')";

the insert statement will now fail because it will look like

insert into dbtable (vol) valuse ('/vol/enycmmcfl01b_ssd2_home_1b_a/CB
+irbigl$'s')

And well that wont work

[roboticus]

mrras25:

That's why davido mentioned placeholders. It's something like:

# Prepare a statement...
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("insert into dbtable (vol) values (?)");
my $funky_string = "/vol/enycmmcfl01b_ssd2_home_1b_a/CBirbigl$'s";
$sth->execute($funky_string);

This way, you don't have to worry about the odd characters inside your statement. Building your own statements like you were trying to do just leads to the difficulties you're experiencing. That's why placeholders were invented.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[muba]

Typically it would look a little like this.

my $insert = "insert into table (vol) values (?)";
$dbh->do($insert, $values[8]);

Generally, the notion is that you never directly put variables into SQL statements.

[MidLifeXis]

Since nobody else has mentioned this yet -- if you assemble SQL in the manner you were originally attempting, you have a much higher probability of having problems once Bobby Tables starts working with you. Having a dropped table or proprietary data extracted can be an expensive lesson to learn.