Programming the Perl DBI

Name

err

Synopsis

$rv = $h->err;

Returns the native database engine error code from the last driver method called. The code is typically an integer, but you should not assume that.

The DBI resets $h->err to undef before most DBI method calls, so the value has only a short lifespan. Also, most drivers share the same error variables across all their handles, so calling a method on one handle will typically reset the error on all the other handles that are children of that driver.

If you need to test for individual errors and have your program be portable to different database engines, then you’ll need to determine what the corresponding error codes are for all those engines, and test for all of them.