Hi, Ok, I tried what you suggested below and upgraded mysql to the latest version 3.23.54(stable) and still get no results. To verify the statements do run, I changed the query to Select * from tablex and that works fine .... also added the die statements, no errors. thanks Craig "Dan Muey" <dmuey@infiniplex.com> wrote in message news:D6D77DB239A2004BB08A240E2E71460D08FA2C@customer.infiniplex.net... I have this in a working script runs no problem at all. Mysql version 3.26 I think. Do you verify that that the query was executed? If the query gets bad then it will never get to your while loop. You could use DBI->trace to see what's going on. $query = "DESCRIBE $existing_table_name"; my $sth = $dbh->prepare($query) or die "Can not prepare $query :" . $dbh->errstr ."\n"; $sth->execute or die "Can not execute $query :" . $dbh->errstr . "\n"; my $row; while(@row = $sth->fetchrow_array) { print "$row[0] \n"; } $sth->finish; Dan -----Original Message----- From: Craig Williams [mailto:news@ip80.com] Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 6:49 PM To: beginners@perl.org Subject: Really stuck: DBI, mysqlPP. Ok, firstly - I don't believe this is a mysql issue as I have a working server which I can prove and the fact I've just learnt Perl was my reason for posting here, maybe I've screwed up the syntax. I just installed the modules for DBI and MySQL and they seem to work great except for one aspect. Getting column names. Code example; (code sits in a debug sub) my $sq = $myconn->prepare("show columns from as_codes;"); $sq->execute(); while (@tmp = $sq->fetchrow_array()) { print $tmp[0], "\n"; } $myconn is a working connection: the select statements work great. The above always produces nothing, the while loop never runs. I've also tried the "describe" sql statement but I get the same results. The table as_codes has about 12 columns. I even tried the DBI, {NAME} option but got no columns returned. If I go into mysql admin and type the above statement then it works. Also, if I put the above code into a loop and say force it to perform the operation 10 times, it will work for at least 1 of them. Is this a bug ? Where can I look next ? thanks Craig -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-help@perl.orgThread Previous | Thread Next