use Perl

• Scars wiki (Score:1)

  by davebaker (4482)

  Good point!

  I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have Perl programmers contribute their scar stories to a wiki or other sort of interactive web page ... a kind of "traps for the unwary" list for learners (which is everybody <g>).
• depends on context (Score:2)

  by gav (2710)

  This isn't necessarily anything wrong with using SELECT *, relying on the order of columns returned is the problem.
  
  I remember reading somebody saying that you should always use an ORDER BY clause in SQL, which is useless in the cases where order doesn't matter.
  
  Sometimes order does matter, sometimes it doesn't, it's about using the right tool for the job.
  • Re:depends on context (Score:1)

    by jwinter (5637)

    This guy's absolutely right. You shouldn't be depending on the order of the columns returned, you should address the values by the columns. There's different ways to do that: named bind variables, returning each row as a hash keyed by its column, etc.
  • Re:depends on context (Score:2)

    by Ovid (2709)

    I know that I've said results returned should always use "ORDER BY" and I was (again) being stupid. I was pissed off at a programmer failing to sort his results properly and when I get annoyed, I say stupid things.

    In that case, the programmer eventually sorted the data, in Perl. That's usually stupid when the database can handle it. In our case it resulted in a bug whereby the data always had to be sorted but sometimes we were getting it before it had been sorted. The problem (and this is merlyn's poi
• In a similar vein (Score:2)

  by VSarkiss (704)

  I used to tell my clients to be suspicious of any consultant who came in like "a knight in shining armor".

  You want the knight whose armor is old, rusty, and has plenty of dents and dings. Shows they've fought real battles.