Re: Using the DBI to return the first ix/i rows

[salvadors]

I need to return the first x rows of a 'select' statement

The most obvious way is to put a 'LIMIT x' in your SELECT.

But if for some reason you can't do that, then use something like:

my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$sth->execute;
$sth->bind_columns(\my ($col1, $col2 ... $coln));
my $count = 0;
while ($sth->fetch) {
  [$col1 .. $coln will be populated with the values in that row]
  last if ++$count == 10;
}

Tony

[eg]

In case you're using Oracle: you don't have a LIMIT SQL command (go figure), so you need to use ROWNUM instead:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE ROWNUM < 10;

[davorg]

Sybase doesn't have either of those mechanisms. You need to do it in two steps.

set rowcount 10
select * from table

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me