I do #2 as a matter of routine, so a choice can be made based on the current desire.
On Monday, August 3, 2020 at 4:40:31 PM UTC-4, Karen Tellef wrote: > > Hard to believe in my decades of programming that this is the first time > this has happened. Just wondering if other programmers have tips on this > situation for the future. And I'm kinda bored this afternoon so thought I > would post. > > History: I work on this company's stuff with another programmer. We work > independently, each of us handling different "areas" of the business. The > company's contact himself also does a bit of programming. So 3 of us > writing programs. > > I write a new program today, works great for me, he keeps claiming it > doesn't work for him, giving him my "no data to report" message. He exits > and comes back in, never works. I finally ask him exactly the process > he's going thru, and I find out that he will run another program > immediately before running this program. Aha, a clue. > > Guess what. In that other program (written by the other programmer), he > creates a temp table (and doesn't drop it) using the same column name that > I have in my temp table, but as a different datatype! So my temp table > was never created because of the structure error, and it reports no data! > > So what's the best way to prevent this? I was thinking of things like: > > 1. Each of us using temp column names using our initials (like: ktQty > INT). But even with that, there's no guarantee that I'll remember I used a > "ktQty" as a Double once, and as an Integer another time. > > 2. I could search program code for occurrences of each "new" temp column > name I want to use to see if any other program uses that name. > > 3. I could only use permanent column names, altho using the permanent > name "Qty" is not as descriptive as a temp column name like: > tmpQtyToShipByMonthend > > > But in reality there's 3 "easy" things I could do: > > 1. We could drop our temp tables at the end of our programs. None of us > do this. I like leaving them around in case I run something from the menu > and want to get to the R> prompt to see temp table data. Do you all drop > temp tables? > > 2. After every "create temp table" do a "select ... from sys_tables" to > see if the temp table exists. Seems the easiest, doesn't it? Again, do > any of you routinely do this? > > 3. Or.. I can figure that since this has happened once in the >20 yrs > that I've worked on that account, figure that it's most likely not going to > happen again so don't worry about it. > > > Just some Monday musings...... > > > Karen > > > > > > -- For group guidelines, visit http://www.rbase.com/support/usersgroup_guidelines.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBASE-L" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbase-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbase-l/29634058-c9c6-468b-968b-fdaff81eccd9o%40googlegroups.com.
