MySQL Select Count on VARCHAR in PERL - mysql

Question

I have a simple SELECT statement:
$sql = "SELECT count(*) FROM member_temp WHERE member_Id = '".trim($id)."'";
The member_Id column is a VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL
This works fine until the SELECT gets to a member_Id that has a alpha value behind it, like 1126A. It then throws the error
Could not prepare SQL statement:SELECT count(*) FROM member_temp WHERE member_Id = '1126A'
As a test I remove this record and the SELECT runs fine until the next value with an A.
How can I make this query run and process records with an alpha character?
This is part of larger block of code that deletes records not found from the main member table:
while ( #data = $sth->fetchrow_array() ) {
my $id = $data[2];
my $pk = $data[0];
$sql = "SELECT count(*) FROM member_temp WHERE member_Id = '" . trim($id) . "'";
#print "$sql\n";
my $xth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$xth->execute();
$cRows = $xth->fetchrow_array() || die "Could not prepare SQL statement:$sql";
#print "$cRows\n";
if ( $cRows == 0 ) {
$sql = "DELETE FROM member WHERE sys_Id = " . $pk;
$xth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$xth->execute();
$cnt_del++;
}

Answer 1

Ok, this is Perl answer now :)
There is nothing wrong with your query (except that it is not preparing statements correctly and you are using string interpolation).
In the comments you said if this query is run directly
It completes successfully and returns a value of 0
Then in your code you have one condition which is wrong
$cRows = $xth->fetchrow_array() || die "Could not prepare SQL statement:$sql";
That means even if the query executed correctly but has 0 rows, it should show you that error message, which is not right.
So all you need to do is to fix that error message. That die should be shown if the query failed to execute, not when it executed correctly but has no results.
You can correct your query like
$sql = "SELECT count(*) FROM member_temp WHERE member_Id = ?";
$xth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$xth->execute($id) or die("Failed to execute query:". $xth->errstr);
And your rows check can be
if ($xth->rows == 0)
// No match found