$$rowRef{'$rowName'}

Yes, I'm sure. I tried it with, and without the quotes. As for elsf and elsif, I know I've been up most of the night, but I am not hallucinating, eclipse tells me I have a syntax error when I use elsif. Could it be one of the modules I'm using? (I'm using strict, HTTP::Date, XML::DOM, CGI). PS: I am using eclipse on Windows Vista, but the programs run on a Linux server. I have not figured out, yet, how to run and debug perl on the Eclipse IDE on Vista

It might have gone by you - JavaFan's question was more rhetorical, as the differences in output of the following code show you:

use strict;

my $rowRef = {
    foo => 'foo value',
    bar => 'bar value',
};

my $rowName = 'bar';
for my $rn ($rowName, '$rowName') {
    my $rowValue;
    if (exists $rowRef->{$rn}) {
        $rowValue = $rowRef->{$rn}
    } else {
        $rowValue = '<does not exist>';
    };
    print "rowRef for '$rn' is '$rowValue'\n";
};
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Then you are misinterpreting the error message. For example,

>perl -e"while ($x) {  if ($y) { } } elsif ($z) { } }"
syntax error at -e line 1, near "} elsif"
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

>perl -e"while ($x) {  if ($y) { } elsif ($z) { } }"

>
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Replacing elsif with random words is not a suitable bug fix.

If you are running a program that compiles, runs and does something (even something wrong -- i.e. perl doesn't report a syntax error), then the code you are running is different in at least one crucial detail from the code that you posted. So you are showing us the wrong problem.

(Update: in case you didn't figure it out from your dialog with ikegami, when your IDE reports a syntax error, it's because perl reported a syntax error; the script won't run at all until you fix the syntax error.)

As for the single-quotes around $rowName when you use that as a hash key, that's just wrong. Don't do that. You can waste a little time putting double-qoutes around the variable if you really want to do that, but it will make no difference relative to using the variable with no quotes at all.

Try putting some debugging output like this:

warn "this_var=$this_var; that_var=$that_var\n";
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Apart from all that, if the "table's last row number" is really just the number of rows in the table (which is how I would normally interpret the phrase), then what's wrong with doing this:

sub lastRowNum
{
    my ( $dbh, $table ) = @_;
    my ( $rowcount ) = $dbh->selectrow_array( "select count(*) from $t
+able" );
    return $rowcount;
}
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sub lastRowNum
{
    my ( $dbh, $key_fld, $table ) = @_;
    my ( $last_id ) = $dbh->selectrow_array( "select max($key_fld) fro
+m $table" );
    return $last_id;
}
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(Update: in case you didn't figure it out from your dialog with ikegami, when your IDE reports a syntax error, it's because perl reported a syntax error; the script won't run at all until you fix the syntax error.)

EPIC (the Eclipse module for Perl support) uses PPI to parse the program or module and identify warnings and errors before it is executed, so false positives and false negatives are possible. But it's unlikely.

elsif expects to get a condition as well. so your example should be

if (!$Ok) {
  print "x";
} elsif ($some_other <> $condition) {
  print "y";
}
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Not including the condition does indeed make the elsif into a syntax error, and elsf does indeed make it run, but it doesn't make it work.

Oh and please please please don't embed variables in SQL unless you properly untaint them first, and even then only do it if someone is holding a gun to your head ;)

Is dbTools::MySQLqry a copy/paste error?

PS: the O'Reilly Perl book mentions an elsif operator, but when I try it, I get a syntax error (using Eclipse as an IDE), and only elsf works.

I use Eclipse myself and the elsif works fine;) Besides that, Perl would complain about elsf since it's not Perl?!

No, it's not a copy/paste error. It's a module I wrote as a MySQL helper. It works just fine. Also, if I take the subroutine code, and place it directly in a module, it works fine. It's only a problem when I call it as a subroutine.