undef & NULL

[Rob Ransbottom]

With the below code, with PostgreSQL, with Perl 5.005.
I wish to map Perl's 'undef' to SQL's 'NULL' but get the 
warning

   Use of uninitialized value at /home/rir/Rbks/Lib/Dept.pm line 26.

when passing in a hash object like:

   { dept => "somestring", descr => undef }

This is proper perl behavior but I'd like to accomplish 
this without warnings.

I have about thirty similar classes with up to 60 fields.
In each I have delete/store/fetch/update functions
which will act on one or less records.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

rir


   package Dept;
   
   @ISA = qw( RHOb DbO);
   use Rbks; use RHOb; use DbO; use Carp;

   # DBI stuff is inherited through Rbks.
   
   sub store { 
       carp "Wrong argument count to store" unless ( @_ == 1);
       my $self = shift @_;
       $dbh->do(                                #### line 26
           "insert into Dept ( dept, descr) 
             values ( '$self->{dept}', '$self->{descr}')"
       );
   }