Question about errors out of an eval do combination

[Warden, Ronald MCF:EX]

Hello,

I am trying to use the eval {...} function to do a non-select database
action, then checking the $@ to see if I get an error. If there is an error
then I write a message out to a log file. I have had this work in an earlier
version of DB!.

My current environment is: Solaris 2.8, Oracle 8.1.7, perl v5.6.0, DBD 1.06
and DBI 1.14

my first script is:

        [get the userid password and SID for Oracle bits]

        $dbh  = DBI->connect($DSN, $uid, $pw) 
               || die "Cannot connect to $DBI: $DBI::errstr\n" unless $dbh;

        $strt_date = &ParseDate("today");
        $start_date = &UnixDate($strt_date,"%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S");

        printf LOG_FILE "Start Run: $start_date\n";


        printf LOG_FILE "Creating Index gl_ap_po_dtl_idx\n";

        eval {
          $dbh->do(qq[drop index gl_ap_po_dtl_idx]);
        };
        if ($@) {
          printf LOG_FILE "Error creating INDEX gl_ap_po_dtl_idx\n\t\t
$DBI::errstr\n";
        }

        printf LOG_FILE "Finished creating Indices\n";

This produces nothing in the log file nor anything on the console.

If I do the following:

        eval {
          $dbh->do(qq[drop index gl_ap_po_dtl_idx]) || printf LOG_FILE
"Error creating INDEX gl_ap_po_dtl_idx\n\t $DBI::errstr\n";
        };
        if ($@) {
          printf LOG_FILE "Error creating INDEX gl_ap_po_dtl_idx\n\t\t
$DBI::errstr\n";
        }

        printf LOG_FILE "Finished creating Indices\n";

At least I get an message on the console running the job, but I still get
nothing in the log file.

What am I missing here? I should be able to get the error string into the
log file. I am getting messages, such as the start and stop times into the
file.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
---
Ronald Warden
Ministry for Children and Families
356-0466
Data Analysis Branch