root

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use DBI;

sub db_connect {
        my $dsn = "delfi;host=localhost;mysql_enable_utf8=1";;
        my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:$dsn", "mysql", "", { PrintError => 0, RaiseError => 1 });

        return $dbh;
}

my $dbh = db_connect();
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT name FROM newsCategories WHERE ID=?");
$sth->execute(2);
my ($rootname) = $sth->fetchrow or die 'Non existing root category';
print "rex: ", $1, "\n" if $rootname =~ /^(...)/;
print "substr: ", substr($rootname, 0, 3) . '...';