Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Use this function to execute a prepared statement multiple times, once for each set of values given either as the second argument of the method or from previous uses of the bind_param_array() method. If you use the bind_param_array() method, you won’t provide the array values with this execute_array() method. For an example of this statement’s use with the bind_param_array() method, see that description earlier in this chapter. Here is an example without that method:

...
my @old_names = ('Graham Green', 'Virginia Wolf');
my @new_names = ('Graham Greene', 'Virginia Woolf');

my $sql_stmnt = "UPDATE books 
                 SET author = ?,
                 status = ?
                 WHERE author = ?";
                 
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql_stmnt);

my ($tuple, $rows_chg) = $sth->execute_array(undef, \@new_names, 'active', 
   \@old_names);

$sth->finish();

Notice that we are able to capture the number of rows changed by the SQL statement. Since we didn’t specify any attributes, the $tuple variable will be empty. A tuple is an ordered list of values or objects.