sybperl-l Archive

From: Michael Peppler <mpeppler at MBAY dot NET>
Subject: Re: Passing a $dbh to a subroutine
Date: Sep 18 1997 4:50PM

Java G wrote:
> 
> salvatore.sferrazza@ny.ubs.com wrote:
> 
> >      Can this be done?  Right now in a majority of my applications I
> > write
> >      subs to carry out inserts, updates, selects, etc..  Each one of
> > these
> >      subs opens/keeps its own $dbh that is closed automatically when
> > the
> >      sub exits.  In order to avoid the overhead of opening/closing the
> >
> >      connection and re-specifying the connection params each time, can
> > I
> >      just pass the $dbh to the sub and access it that way?
> >
> >      TIA,
> >
> >      Sal
> 
>    by default, perl variables are global, do there's no
> need to pass anything.

True.

But unless you are writing small/trivial scripts I would strongly
recommend that you always use the 'strict' pragma and the -w
switch. You'll avoid tons of typos and other simple mistakes.

These two options will force you to pre-declare global variables 
(via the use vars() pragma) or use fully qualified variable names
(like $main::dbh), or use lexical variables (my $dbh).

This is a GOOD THING to keep your programs as clean and easy to
debug (and enhance) as possible.

Michael
-- 
Michael Peppler       -||-  Data Migrations Inc.
mpeppler@datamig.com  -||-  http://www.mbay.net/~mpeppler