Correct way to deal with returned NULLs?

From: Rich Jesse (Rich.Jesse_at_quadtechworld.com)
Date: 04/26/04 

To: "'dbi-users@perl.org'" <dbi-users@perl.org>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:11:33 -0500

Howdy,

I have a question from one of our developers that's been bugging me and I
can't find an answer. Given this v1.37 DBI code fragement:

while ( my ($projectno,$description,$dateclosed) = $sth->fetchrow_array )
{
        print "$projectno";
        print "$description";
        print "$dateclosed";
        print "\n";
}

...I keep getting a "Use of uninitialized value in string" message on the
print of the $dateclosed variable, whenever the corresponding Oracle DB
column is NULL. And you've already figured out that the program is run with
"-W". When the "-W" is dropped, no message.

This has got to be simple, but a read through the DBI FAQ, the index of
Tim's book, and Google, and I'm still unable to provide a simple answer
that's probably staring me in the face, other than "Drop the -W".

How do others deal with this?

TIA,
Rich

Rich Jesse System/Database Administrator
rich.jesse@quadtechworld.com QuadTech, Sussex, WI USA

Relevant Pages