Inexact Equality
2008-01-15
Visual dBase has a command among the SET variable family that goes like this: SET EXACT ON
That's because until you type it, the default is that matching things using an equals sign doesn't actually look for equal terms at all, but instead stops at the first term that might be a bit similar; 'equal, but not necessarily exactly'. I don't understand the behaviour of the inexact matching and I don't see the point of it; if I need substring matching I'll use the 'contains' operator or look for equality after truncating the test string.
I dread to think what manner of substance abuse led someone to think that it was a good idea to use an equality operator that by default doesn't check for equality.
On another note, the lack of blog posts and story chapters is because I'm playing far too much World of Warcraft. Don't worry, sooner or later I'll get sick of the way I seem to be playing all I can and still not keeping up, and I'll go and do something more constructive.
That's because until you type it, the default is that matching things using an equals sign doesn't actually look for equal terms at all, but instead stops at the first term that might be a bit similar; 'equal, but not necessarily exactly'. I don't understand the behaviour of the inexact matching and I don't see the point of it; if I need substring matching I'll use the 'contains' operator or look for equality after truncating the test string.
I dread to think what manner of substance abuse led someone to think that it was a good idea to use an equality operator that by default doesn't check for equality.
On another note, the lack of blog posts and story chapters is because I'm playing far too much World of Warcraft. Don't worry, sooner or later I'll get sick of the way I seem to be playing all I can and still not keeping up, and I'll go and do something more constructive.
Comments