http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=229985


in reply to Perl and MySQL - performing a search...

The reason why nonmatching rows are reading as "bad" is because of your regex... if you use your name as $str and then do a SQL lookup then the query will yield zero rows and $row will be set to undef (assuming "Richard" isn't a bad name in your database. :-D) Therefore this $str =~ /$row->{f_user} becomes logically equivalent to "Richard" =~ // And since there's an empty string somewhere in "Richard" the result will always be true... it'll always be true whenever your SQL lookup yields zero rows.

That said, it's a little weird to do a LIKE SQL on your database and then turn right around and do (nearly) the same thing in a Perl regex. If you wanna compare names to your "bad names" table remember that LIKE will only work if the "name" is the same length or shorter than an entry in your database, so "%ass%" will match "asshole" but "%asshole%" will never match "ass". Depending on what you're trying to do you might be better off if you just do the whole "tell me if it's a bad name" routine in Perl and forget trying to do it in SQL. :-D

Gary Blackburn
Trained Killer