Are embedded spaces ever valid in non-delimited names?

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Are embedded spaces ever valid in non-delimited names?

Mark Dalley

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Points: 2981
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August 29, 2014 at 6:55 am

#292811

Hello experts
I am trying to debug a procedure which is timing out, not in every case, but in some cases.
During my perusals, I note that there seems to be a stray space in the 3rd line of following fragment of an UPDATE statement in the procedure:
...
FROM dbo.LoadMedicationsGP LMGP
INNER JOIN dbo.Patient P ON LMGP.PatientId = P.PatientId
INNER JOIN dbo. PatientMonths PM ON P.PatientKey = PM.PatientKey
AND LMGP.DatePeriodKey = PM.DatePeriodKey
...
SSMS seems to parse the statement perfectly OK, but to me it looks as if it ought to be wrong.
I suspect that the space has no material effect, but I just wanted some confirmation one way or the other. A quick search in BOL didn't reveal anything, but feel free to correct me.
Thanks in advance.
Mark Dalley

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John Mitchell-245523 SSC Guru Points: 148809 More actions · Answer 1

You can check for yourself.

SELECT TOP 100 *

FROM dbo. LoadMedicationsGP

It should work.

John

Mark Dalley SSCrazy Points: 2981 More actions · Answer 2

Hello John

You're right, it does work. To my mind, it oughtn't to, though. The parser should throw out the "dbo. " as an incomplete name.

Makes me nervous when stuff like this gets accepted without a murmur of complaint. You wonder what else it is swallowing and maybe interpreting differently than you expected.

MarkD

Bill Talada SSChampion Points: 11954 More actions · Answer 3

The parser is very forgiving of formatting. If you think of 4-part names as each part being independent and as overriding a default scope, it will make sense to allow spaces between object names. There are plenty of anachronisms in mssql left over from the sybase days.

SELECT TOP 10t. *FROM sys.tables t

Mark Dalley SSCrazy Points: 2981 More actions · Answer 4

Bill Talada (8/29/2014)
The parser is very forgiving of formatting. If you think of 4-part names as each part being independent and as overriding a default scope, it will make sense to allow spaces between object names. There are plenty of anachronisms in mssql left over from the sybase days.
SELECT TOP 10t. *FROM sys.tables t

Ugh! How readable is that! Sure it works, but how dare it. Aesthetically, it is a reeking mess.

A little more strictness in the parsing process would (a) enforce greater readability; and, (b) make it easier to enhance syntax if a new feature needs to be added. The current approach is too context-sensitive for my taste.

MarkD