Hi, If I have a table: create table messages ( id int unsigned not null unique, data longtext ); and I have a perl script: 1 $sth = $dbh->prepare( "SELECT data FROM messages WHERE id = ?;"); 2 $sth->execute($id); 3 $data = $sth->fetchrow; QUESTION: will the script stop at line 3 until all data is read into $data? (i think it is) if so, if data is 4GB long, and my NT has 512MB RAM and 512MB pagefile, will the server crash from "out of memory"? seeing that #2 is a big problem, is there a way to retrieve data safely? like retrieiving sections by sections similar to open SFILE, "filename"; binmode SFILE; while (SFILE->read($data,10000)) { print $data; } can I use mysql's substring function? $i = 0; while (1) { 1 $sth = $dbh->prepare( "SELECT substring(data,$i,10000) FROM messages WHERE id = ?;"); 2 $sth->execute($id); 3 $data = $sth->fetchrow; 4 print $data; 5 $i += length($data); others here } --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php