Am I goin crazy!?

[Anon]

Can "by" be used as a field name in MySQL?

[Anon]

No, your not going crazy I believe "by" is reserved SQL keyword. You can't uses keywords as table names of any other database
objects for that matter.

[[deleted]]

Rule #1 in database design, use names that make sense by themselves. 'by' on it's own tells you nothing at all, think of something else.

[Anon]

Yep it is ... Thanks!

[Anon]

changed it to "author". Thanks!

[Anon]

... 'by' on it's own tells you nothing at > all, think of something else.

You do not know that. Just because it means nothing to you does not mean that it means nothing to someone else. "by" could mean many different things if it were not a reserved word.

[Anon]

But what happens when someone else has to go through his code / database tables. Its all very well and good if Anthony knows exactly what he's talking about but what about the poor bastard who has to sit around decoding Anthonys sublanguage before they can modify his work?

[[deleted]]

sigh ofcourse he knows what he means by "by", he wouldn't use a name if he couldn't understand it himself.

The point is that "by" does not tell you anything about what it contains, you need to see the context to deduce what it means.
That means that if you look back on that script in a few weeks time, you'll be completely lost and you'll have to read a sh*tload of code to find out what "by" contains.