While Csongor Fagyal (I belive) is correct about current behavior, the DBI
documentation explicitly says that this will break:
Currently, a new hash reference is returned for each
row. This will change in the future to return the
same hash ref each time, so don't rely on the current
behaviour.
Since you probably need to make a copy anyway, I wouldn't bother to worry
about what DBI may or may not do after a connection is closed. Seems much
safer to just assume that DBI owns the hash, and whatever you want needs to
be copied out.
- James Moore
(sql,query,queries,smallint)