Ok, so we have a field in our database called file_format and it is a string that when evaluated and $b is defined, will return a patch name with the bug number filled in.

The problem is that over time each person's way of putting $b into this template string varied based on their personal tastes. So we have all of the following in this column in the database. 

p${b}.zip
p{$b}.zip
p$b.zip

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and the problem with this comes when you want to create a SQL SELECT statement to pull out a row when one of the join criteria is this column. Because, instead of writing: 
SELECT * FROM table WHERE file_format='p$b.zip'

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I have to write 
SELECT * FROM table WHERE file_format='p$b.zip' or
file_format='p{$b}.zip' or file_format='p${b}.zip'

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and I have the willies because I'm not sure if I have covered all the ways that such variable interpolation can take place.

On the other hand, you might comment on my dilemma as a lesson in business logic as discussed in davorg's "Data Munging with Perl". All business logic should be in classes and hence the policy for this field read and write processing should have been in a class where the template string was generated in invariant Perl code as opposed to however it was done here (I wasn't around when it was done and don't want to stress anyone in this poor economy for fear of being kicked out into the streets).

In reply to TMTOWTDI isn't best in this case by princepawn

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