Perl DBI connect and disconnect

[thepoetwarrior]

I've tested perl mysql DBI connect and disconnect in various ways and it seems that disconnect doesn't do anything.

$dbh->disconnect;
$dbh->disconnect();

It still has a value if I pass them to quest::gmsay()

putting a 'my' in front of it makes it disappear after the sub is done, which was tested with if(!$dbh), otherwise becomes global or something.

Is disconnect required? Does it even do anything?

If we don't disconnect, would we eventually have hundreds and thousands of active connections?

Hope this make sense, and someone can answer.