in reply to Re: Re: Re: OK, OK, I'm taking the DBI plunge. Now what?
in thread OK, OK, I'm taking the DBI plunge. Now what?

And pray none of your data has returns or pipes.

That is a pretty big assumption. Big assumptions like that are what leads to fragile infrastructures. Defensive programmers try to avoid that kind of fragility if at all possible...

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Re: Re (tilly) 4: OK, OK, I'm taking the DBI plunge. Now what?
by thor (Priest) on Jan 11, 2002 at 18:41 UTC
    Well, in this case, that he chose those for his delimiters would lead me to believe that his data is what I might call 'vanilla' (no field contains a pipe or newline). Besides which, once he puts the data in to a RDBMS, thenhe doesn't have to worry about it.

    Just out or curiosity, what do you consider good delimiters? I use '||' for field delimiters, and '@@\n" for row delimiters...
      I consider going to fancier delimiters because your old ones broke a design mistake. The problem isn't that there is a right delimiter. The problem is that you are creating data formats with known limitations, and those limitations are going to bite you.

      I rather prefer data formats with provisions for escaping mechanisms allowing them to handle arbitrary data. Nothing less will suffice to allow for reliable software.