When to use $sth->fetchrow_hashref, $sth->fetchrow_arrayref and $sth->fetchrow_array?

Question

I know that:

• $sth->fetchrow_hashref returns a hashref of the fetched row from database,
• $sth->fetchrow_arrayref returns an arrayref of the fetched row from database, and
• $sth->fetchrow_array returns an array of the fetched row from database.

But I want to know best practices about these. When should we use fetchrow_hashref and when should we use fetchrow_arrayref and when should we use fetchrow_array?

Answer 1

You could do worse than read DBI recipes by gmax.

It notes, among other things:

The problem arises when your result set, by mean of a JOIN, has one or more columns with the same name. In this case, an arrayref will report all the columns without even noticing that a problem was there, while a hashref will lose the additional columns