Will Terminators Be Required?

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Will Terminators Be Required?

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ZZartin SSC-Dedicated Points: 30921 More actions · Answer 1

Lynn Pettis - Monday, August 6, 2018 10:45 AM
Actually, the MERGE statement is required to be terminated by a semicolon.
Not sure about any other new stuff.

Ah... okay I was mostly thinking of CTE's I don't use merge enough to notice.

Jonathan AC Roberts SSCoach Points: 18361 More actions · Answer 2

I do not like punctuation it is too small to look significant and easily missed.
I have convinced myself (maybe wrongly) that a semicolon is not a statement terminator but a statement delimiter. That way I can quite happily add a semicolon at the front of a WITH line and not feel guilty.

I can see why Microsoft enforced this as you can have a select with a WITH statement for table hints
SELECT * FROM myTable [ WITH ( < table_hint > [ [ , ]...n ] ) ]
Or you could have two statements where the WITH is the start of the CTE:
SELECT * FROM myTable; [ WITH <common_table_expression> [ ,...n ] ]

Lynn Pettis SSC Guru Points: 442467 More actions · Answer 3

Jonathan AC Roberts - Monday, August 6, 2018 11:59 AM
I do not like punctuation it is too small to look significant and easily missed.
I have convinced myself (maybe wrongly) that a semicolon is not a statement terminator but a statement delimiter. That way I can quite happily add a semicolon at the front of a WITH line and not feel guilty.
I can see why Microsoft enforced this as you can have a select with a WITH statement for table hints
SELECT * FROM myTable [ WITH ( < table_hint > [ [ , ]...n ] ) ]
Or you could have two statements where the WITH is the start of the CTE:
SELECT * FROM myTable; [ WITH <common_table_expression> [ ,...n ] ]

Putting the semicolon at the beginning of a CTE is my biggest pet peeve. You may call it a separator but it is a terminator. With your logic that also means you are happy with a semicolon in front of the THROW statement as it also requires the previous statement be terminated with a semicolon.

drew.allen SSC Guru Points: 76996 More actions · Answer 4

Lynn Pettis - Monday, August 6, 2018 1:04 PM
Putting the semicolon at the beginning of a CTE is my biggest pet peeve. You may call it a separator but it is a terminator. With your logic that also means you are happy with a semicolon in front of the THROW statement as it also requires the previous statement be terminated with a semicolon.

I also think of semicolons more as delimiters. I tend to put my semicolons on separate lines, mostly for ease of editing, but because they also stand out more when they are the only printable character on a line.

Drew

J. Drew Allen
Business Intelligence Analyst
Philadelphia, PA

Jonathan AC Roberts SSCoach Points: 18361 More actions · Answer 5

Lynn Pettis - Monday, August 6, 2018 1:04 PM
Putting the semicolon at the beginning of a CTE is my biggest pet peeve. You may call it a separator but it is a terminator. With your logic that also means you are happy with a semicolon in front of the THROW statement as it also requires the previous statement be terminated with a semicolon.

That's odd because I'm not happy with a semicolon at the beginning of a throw. I've been putting the semicolon in the statement before the throw not at the front of the throw. Normally (in my code anyway) the throw is inside a catch block so I've somehow also convinced myself that I should punctuate the inside a catch block.