Semicolons in queries...

gazchap

Just out of curiousity, why does the PHP manual state that queries used with mysql_query should not be terminated with semicolons?

I've always put semicolons at the end of my queries and it doesn't seem to have any adverse effects on the scripts.

OhLordy

What they mean is you put the semicolons outside the function call rather than in the actual query
this
mysql_query("select from table",$conn);
rather than this
mysql_query("select from table;",$conn)
See?
Rob

gazchap

Are you sure? 🙂 The manual says that "The query string should not end with a semicolon".

In the code:

<? $rs = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM foo WHERE bar='1'"); ?>

The query string is obviously the bit up until bar='1'.

The manual seems to assume that you know that all PHP statements must end in a semicolon, so I'm not sure that what you say is the case.

I could be wrong, of course. I was just curious as to why - security hole perhaps?

superwormy

1: you don't need to, where-as in normal SQL you DO need to terminate your comments in a ;

2: to remind people that you can't run more than one query at a time to each call to mysql_query() ie you CANNOT do this:

mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM table1; DELETE FROM table2;");

gazchap

Cheers, I thought it might be something like that. Just the prominence of it in the manual suggested to me that it might have been for a more "serious" reason, as it were 🙂