Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

This function returns a string given as the first argument, placed in quotes, for an optional maximum length given as the second argument. It will not escape quotes within the string. If given a numeric value instead of a string, it will not return the results within quotes. It will return NULL values as undefined. Here is an example:

...
my $test = "This is Russell's test!";
print "Test: " . DBI::neat($test, 24) . "\n";

Here are the results:

Test: 'This is Russell's t...'

Notice that the results are in single quotes, that the text was truncated even though the maximum length given was enough to just encompass the string. If a value of 25—one more than needed—had been given, then the full text would have been displayed without ellipses. To neaten a list of strings, use the neat_list() function.