use Perl

• Better is relative... (Score:1)

  by jarich (4909) on 2005.01.13 18:22 (#37471) Homepage Journal

  It took me a bit to realise how it was that you had a choice in the matter. Like Purdy I just wondered why you didn't use un-quoted (normal) SQL.

  But of course you're using a view and you're talking about how to name columns in that view in a meaningful way. It's clear once I made that minor mental twist.

  In my opinion don't use the latter. Anything that suggests you can use dots, as you do with normal selects from tables, will probably have people making the mistake of deleting or omitting the quotes and wondering why it doesn't work.

  If that leaves only double underscore then I guess you'll use that. lachoy said something about fonts and editors which should be considered, but most editors I use for code make two underscores look like two underscores, or one very long one, which is much the same thing.

  - jarich

  Reply to This

  • Re:Better is relative... (Score:2)

    by vsergu (505)

    I agree about not using dots. If you're going to use weird characters in the column names that require quoting, then why use dots, which will only confuse things because of their normal use? You'd be better off using % or $ or / or anything other than dots.
    
    But really, rather than weird characters or double underscores, if you have to have something why not a prefix like 'NP_' for 'nonprimary' or something? Or maybe you can distinguish by using uppercase?
    • Re:Better is relative... (Score:2)

      by Ovid (2709)

      I had thought about uppercase (studly caps) too, but then Theory reminded me that most databases are case-insensitive. Not only is the case not meaningful, it's not guaranteed to be displayed in any consistent way.
    • Re:Better is relative... (Score:1)

      by Aristotle (5147)

      Yeah. I agree with jarich's points about not using dots too. Personally I'd suggest the colon as a separator.