Why am I getting a syntax error?

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nancy Palmquist" <nlp at vss3.com>
To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: Why am I getting a syntax error?


> Kenneth Brody wrote:
>> Quoting Nancy Palmquist (Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:56:50 -0500):
>> [...]
>>
>>>(it may be true as Ken suggests that a filePro lookup will work without
>>>the {"" but an EXPORT or IMPORT does not.  I just get in the habit to do
>>>it and save myself issues.)
>>
>>
>> Since when?  A quick check of a 4.0 source backup shows that trailing
>> spaces are stripped from variable IMPORT/EXPORT filenames.
>
>
>>
> Ken,
>
> As with many of the programming techniques I have collected, I spent many 
> hours struggling with a programming issue at one time.  I found the 
> problem and made a habit of saving myself a lot of time by just 
> automatically working the solution.
>
> It does not always make sense but it has saved me a lot of time.  The 
> downside to this is that when the solution is no longer necessary, I do 
> not notice so I keep up the same style of programming.
>
> It is foolish sometimes but it gets the job done.
>
> Since I did not have time to verify my suggestions, I will leave that to 
> others to try both and see what works.
>
> My recent programming work has done a lot with manipulating files on 
> Windows and Unix and my gut feeling is that it is still prudent to smuuch 
> off the trailing spaces.
>
> That includes any mention of a filename such as in an EXISTS().
>
> If I have time later I will design a test of this and let everyone know 
> how it works out.
>
> Nancy

As long as fp is still inconsistent, then it's only sane to always snip it 
off.

form FormName will fail when FormName is "invoice     "

It's unavoidable that people form habits. That's our built in biological 
automatic super duper learning neural net fuzzy logic optimizer to beat all 
automatic optimizers and it's inefficient to try and buck that, so what's 
left is to choose to form habits that will work more often than any other 
habits, or barring that, at least ones that fail less harmfully than others.

So, always snip off the trailing spaces and don't worry that sometimes it's 
not necessary.
That's better than never snipping it off and forgetting when you should and 
having things not work and chasing your tail for hours...

Nothing to apologize for or explain or justify there at all. It's the only 
sane way to operate.

Besides, it's also a good habit to always be aware of the data in the way 
that stripping off the trailing (and sometimes leading) spaces keeps 
reminding you.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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