MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

quote_identifier()

Synopsis

$dbh->quote_identifier({$name|$catalog, $database[, $table, \%attri]})

Use this function to escape special characters of an identifier (e.g., a database, table, or column name) for use in an SQL statement. You can provide only the first parameter (a string containing an identifier name), or you can provide the catalog name (undef is acceptable with MySQL), a database name, a table name, and optionally provide database attributes. Here is an example:

my $col1 = $dbh->quote_identifier('author');
my $col2 = $dbh->quote_identifier('title');
my $table = $dbh->quote_identifier('books');

my $sql_stmnt = "SELECT $col1, $col2 FROM $table";
print $sql_stmnt;

Here is the resulting SQL statement:

SELECT `author`, `title` FROM `books`