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From: dbrus.dxs@unify.uucp (Dale R. Shaver)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Comments in Unify 4.0/5.0 SQL
Message-ID: <he43zl8@Unify.Com>
Date: 12 Jul 90 17:24:57 GMT
Sender: news@Unify.Com (news admin)
Reply-To: dbrus.dxs@unify.uucp (Dale R. Shaver)
Organization: Unify Corporation
Lines: 29

In Unify 4.0 and 5.0, SQL does not support the ANSI standard of
commenting with `--'.  So, someone suggested doing `!# comment...'
However, in the best case this can be slow, because a shell call
has to be made; in the worst case, if the user is not allowed,
because of an OS constraint, to begin a new process, this will
cause an error which may not be easily detectable.  

My suggestion is to make use of the "lines" command.  In SQL, 
you may specify how many lines of records you wish to display
between each header.  In SQL for Unify 4.0, the syntax is:

	lines X       <-- where X is between 0 and 32767 
					  (24 is the default, 0 means to print no header)

Everything after X is ignored by the parser, so this makes for
an easy workaround for adding comments:

	sql> lines 0    This query selects everything
	sql> lines 0    from the 'foo' table
	sql> lines 24
	sql> select * from foo/

The only thing you need to remember is that if you use "lines" as a 
comment-maker, then you must reset it to give the actual number of
lines you wish.
Dale Shaver, Unify Technical Support           Phone: (916) 922-1177, x 733
dxs@unify.UUCP                                   Fax: (916) 920-5306
{{ucdavis,csun,lll-crg}!csusac,pyramid,sequent}!unify!dxs
"Please continue the petty bickering; I find it quite intriguing"