Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

This method is used for testing a given array to determine whether each element seems to be a number or not. It returns 1 for each element in an array that appears to be a number; 0 for those that do not. It returns undefined if the element is empty or undefined. Here is an example:

...
my $sql_stmnt = "SELECT book_id, title, author, isbn 
                 FROM books LIMIT 1"; 
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql_stmnt);
$sth->execute();
my (@book) = $sth->fetchrow_array();

my @num_assessment = DBI->looks_like_number(@book);
my $cnt = 0;

foreach (@num_assessment) {
   if($_) { print "Array Element $cnt looks like a number.\n" };
   ++$cnt;
}

The results of this code will show that elements 1 and 4 appear to be numbers.