APM: Last question (for today)

[CaptNemo]

Okay, I have got everything working the database queries ok and returns 
data (into a variable)-

$dbdata = `bdquery.pl`;

Now, I'm worried about someone doing a wildcard query on our table with 
over 200K entries and overflowing something.  Is there a way to limit 
variable size in perl?



IF SO,
What would be a reasonable upper limit (keeping in mind that some queries 
may be a large but necessary)?