Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

This method ends a statement handle given that was established by the prepare() method. There are no arguments to the method. It can sometimes help to free system resources. It should be issued only when the statement handle is not going to be reused or is to be replaced. Here is an example:

...

my $sql_stmnt = "REPLACE INTO books (title, author)
                 VALUES(?,?)";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql_stmnt);

while( my ($title,$author) = each(%books) ) {
   $sth->execute($title,$author);
}

$sth->finish();
$dbh->disconnect();

Since we’re reusing the statement handle here (assuming %books defined earlier in the program has plenty of data), we especially don’t need to call the finish() method after each execution of the SQL statement. Although a statement handle may have been closed with finish(), more statement handles may be created and executed as long as the database handle has not been closed using disconnect().