Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

This function returns the results of both data_string_desc() and data_string_diff(), describing the difference between the two given strings. It returns an empty string if the strings given are identical. Here is an example:

...
my $previous_author = 'Graham Greene';

my $sql_stmnt = "SELECT book_id, author 
                 FROM books 
                 WHERE author LIKE 'Graham%'
                 LIMIT 1";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql_stmnt);
$sth->execute();

while( my($book_id,$author) = $sth->fetchrow_array()) {
   my $diff = DBI->data_diff($previous_author, $author);
   if($diff) { 
      print "$previous_author <=> $author\n$diff \n"; 
      $previous_author = $author;
   }
}

Here are the results of running this program:

Graham Green <=> Graham Greene 
a: UTF8 off, ASCII, 3 characters 3 bytes
b: UTF8 off, ASCII, 12 characters 12 bytes
Strings differ at index 0: a[0]=D, b[0]=G