Maybe you are both right. I agree that his code should be more robust, but since we don't know what data is supposed to be in the column, he might also be right that '' is not an acceptable value.

If I were to write code that extracts values from a database, I'd try it to make it as robust as possible. I would do input validation, and I would probably die (or otherwise warn) if the input is incorrect. And then I would complain by the person responsible for the database. Because while my program deals with the illegal value gracefully, another program may not.

But then again, '' might be an acceptable value; as I said, I don't know what the columns represent.

Abigail

In reply to Re: (OT) Am I weasel or just right? by Abigail-II
in thread (OT) Am I weasel or just right? by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.