exempting a piece of perl code from strict pragma

Question

I have a legacy piece of perl code that uses perl DBI with constructs like

$db->bind_param(1, $some_blob, {TYPE => SQL_BLOB});

where SQL_BLOB is a bareword. I would like to use strict pragma in the same file, but it then complains about the bareword. ('Bareword "SQL_BLOB" not allowed while "strict subs" in use') Can I somehow exempt this line from strict checking?

Answer 1

The strict pragma is lexical

The effect of this pragma is limited to the current file or scope block.

and it can also be turned off within a scope. So

use strict;

...

{
    no strict 'subs';

    $db->bind_param(1, $some_blob, {TYPE => SQL_BLOB});
}

# strict is back on

---

Edit

However, the above will only tolerate the bareword while bind_param still won't know what that (integer constant) is. This is solved by import-ing such constant(s), by using the :sql_types import tag; see DBI Constants. That is anyway a far superior way to satisfy the strict.

Thanks to Andy Lester for bringing this up, see their answer

Answer 2

While you can indeed turn off the strict pragma, that's not going to fix your problem. You're going to just pass the value "SQL_BLOB" as a type, but bind_param isn't going to recognize it.

You need to add an import:

use DBI qw(:sql_types);

If you're already useing DBI, then add :sql_types to the things you import from it.