Darren, Are you asking for a pragma integrity_check (which already exists) or are you just wanting to verify the magic string at the beginning of the file?
The magic string. I want an elegant way for a user to explicitly check the magic string, that is built into the SQLite library itself, and which means not issuing a superflous select.
Personally, I think it would be nice to have some means to say "Open this file if it already exists and is an sqlite file: Don't create it if it doesn't exist". I'm not sure I've found any cases where it is entirely necessary, though. Benjamin.
You're absolutely right. In fact, I very much want that too.
1. I want a command that is explicitly for creating a new file, that will fail with an error if the file already exists.
2. I want a command that is explicitly for opening an existing file, that will fail with an error if the file does not exist.
3. While we're at it, maybe an explicit built-in command to delete a database (done by the SQLite library since it knows best how to clean up after itself).
Perhaps an elegant solution for this and similar things be to add a third
argument to open() called "mode" which simply takes one of a list of defined numerical codes (or alternately, a single bitmask) representing the behaviour we want. Example values could be: 1. "new or fail"; 2. "existing or fail"; 3. "new or existing" (the default). Possibly the thing about checking the magic number could be a fourth and fifth option (to complement 2 and 3), unless that is simply asked for separately.
Any thoughts on this idea?
-- Darren Duncan
