Perl DBI and NULL vales from MSSQL

[Asheep]

Hello, I'm using FreeTDS to connect to MSSQL with great success, so far... But when I output a row that contains a field with a sql <NULL> value I get "Use of uninitialized value".. Is it common to write a function to compare all each field fetched to a undef and replace the literal value with "NULL" or such.. Before you print out a value? Isn't this a waste to run a function on every fetch? Hey monks, what is the better way?

[sachmet]

Yes. You get an undef whenever the field is null, because you might actually want to store the value 'NULL' in a field for some reason.

If you care to print out a NULL in the case of an undef, you can always do:

while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref) {
  foreach my $field (@$row) {
    $field = '(NULL)' unless defined($field);
  }
  ... (the rest of your code) ...
}

and that should take care of your problem.

[thabenksta]

Is it common to write a function to compare all each field fetched to a undef and replace the literal value with "NULL" or such.. Before you print out a value?

You shouldn't have to do that. It should just return NULL automatically.

I might be able to help more if you showed me the code you are working with.

-thabenksta

my $name = 'Ben Kittrell';
$name=~s/^(.+)\s(.).+$/\L$1$2/g;
my $nick = 'tha' . $name . 'sta';