At 16:46 +0000 8/20/02, Brian McDonald wrote:
>>From: "DL Neil" <PHPml@stripped>
>>To: "Brian McDonald" <motivus@stripped>, <win32@stripped>
>>Subject: Re: tutorial problem on LOAD DATA INFILE
>>Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 16:43:04 +0100
>>
>>LOAD DATA #LOCAL removed - see man:4.2.4
>> INFILE "pet.txt"
>> INTO TABLE pet
>> FIELDS
>> TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED by '"'
>> LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';
>>
>
>Ah! Obvious now... this should be right up front and spelled out in
>the tutorial. If the MySQL documentation maintainers are going to
>mix Windows/UNIX worlds in one place they've got to retool the
>tutorial! This section is supposed to be a warm welcome to new
>users; instead, I'm afraid it will frighten a lot of the flirters
>(even corporate flirters) away.
But according to what you say in the next paragraph, it seems that what
the tutorial should say is: "If you start changing a bunch of stuff
according to arbitrary personal preference, then you should not expect
to obtain the same results described here."
Right? :-)
>
>I changed the tutorial load file format right off because I happen
>to favor double quotes around text and alphanum fields. Also, I
>prefer comma separation over tabs. But when things started going
>wrong, I didn't go back to do a head check with the tutorial's
>format, simply because I knew that what I was doing shouldn't be
>rocking the MySQL boat. It seemed like a good exercise.
>
>>Accordingly when you built your version of PET.TXT it had subtle differences
>>to those built by our colleagues on *nix boxes (etc) - including the
>>tutorial writers.
True enough. When I originally wrote the tutorial section (1999), there
weren't that many people using MySQL on Windows. And at that point, I
myself had never used it on Windows.
>>
>>Now before you ask: I had a quick shufti through the manual to find this
>>piece of wisdom, but failed to locate anything to support my claims even on
>>the Windows-specific pages (fortunately execution of the code does!). It
>>seems odd that such is not mentioned, especially in the tutorial, because as
>>you have no doubt seen, there is a great deal of complaint/confusion - and
>>if one fails here, there whole tutorial becomes unusable (unless use
>>INSERT - only hinted at in text).
>>
>
>It appears that the first mention of '\r\n' is in Sect 6.4.9 LOAD
>DATA INFILE Syntax. That's where it belongs... but it also belongs
>in the tutorial.
That may be. On the other hand, it's very common for people to say "you
*really* need to mention X in section Y", but the cumulative result of
following up on all those statements is the entire manual would be repeated
on every page. It's difficult to achieve a balance of putting everything
where it belongs versus repeating everything everywhere.
So what I'm going to suggest is that you provide a specific correction
to the text of the tutorial. You can send it to me.
>Another problem: these section headings are very unstructured. So
>finding what you're looking for under a heading (when you're brand
>new) means a lot of digging around. Especially when you don't
>necessarily know the correct search terms.
>
>>Regards,
>>=dn
>>
>
>Thank you!!!
>
>Brian
