Wordpress wpdb->prepare strange error

I am trying to use wordpress $wpdb in this way:

    function check_date($date) {
   
    global $wpdb;

    $pub = "publish";

     $query = $wpdb->prepare("SELECT post_date FROM " . $wpdb->posts . " WHERE post_name = %s AND post_status = %s;", sanitize_title_with_dashes($result[$i]->title), $pub);
        $cID = $wpdb->get_row( $query );

     echo "". date("Y/m/d", strtotime($cID->post_date)) . " == ".$date. "<br />";
   
    return (date("Y/m/d", strtotime($cID->post_date)) == $date);
   
    }

Code (markup):

The output of echo statement should be:

but instead it shows:

and when i change the code to include only 1 $arg it works in this way i.e.

     $query = $wpdb->prepare("SELECT post_date FROM " . $wpdb->posts . " WHERE post_name = %s;", sanitize_title_with_dashes($result[$i]->title));

Code (markup):

It displays the output as under:

which is not correct as it is the date of a draft or revision of the post i am trying to get the date of.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

It seems your query returns NULL. Have you checked what errors WordPress generates?

$wpdb->show_errors();

Code (markup):

$wpdb->print_error();

Code (markup):

And I don't see a reason why you should should prepare the $pub variable. If it's not a user generated input, you can use it directly in your query:

$query = $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT post_date FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_name = %s AND post_status = '$pub'", sanitize_title_with_dashes( $result[$i]->title ) );

Code (markup):

Tip: If you only select one field in your query (post_date) you can use $wpdb->get_var instead of $wpdb->get_results. It returns a single variable instead of the object.

Anyway, why do you use both echo and return in your function?