[kh99]

Originally Posted by John Lester

I still don't understand why it's different in the creating part. In the creating portion of the query it's dot space table_prefix space dot space quotation. Why isn't it dot table_prefix dot quotation?

What you're doing is building a string representing the sql for the query, so there's a lot of different ways that could be done. In the examples above it's being done by using the "string concatenation" operator (the dot) to put together multiple strings. The spaces that appear outside of quotes are optional, so that, for instance:

"The table prefix is " . TABLE_PREFIX . " for sql queries"

and

"The table prefix is ".TABLE_PREFIX." for sql queries"

Result in the same string, because the extra spaces are outside of the string "literals" so they're optional.

The online tutorials (at least the ones I have checked) don't even use the same punctuations. In some they use the comma and in others they use the period. Some say you don't need the semi-colon, others say you do. Some use quotation marks around text while others use single quotation marks. How the hell do you know which one is right?

I don't know about the comma thing - in php, a dot is used to concatenate strings and a comma doesn't work. (Unless you're talking about the SQL and not the php, in that case we'd have to see examples to explain it).

As for the semicolon, that's used to end an sql query but it isn't needed when doing queries using the vb functions. One string has to equal exactly one query, so there's no need for an end character.

In php you can use either single or double quotes. There are some differences (you should look at the php docs if you're interested), but in a lot of cases either one will work. If you're talking about use of quotes in the sql query itself, they are optional in some cases and in some cases they need to be back ticks (which can be confused with single quotes). Most likely the only thing you have to worry about (as far as valid sql) is putting single quotes around literal strings.

Having said all that, a couple of the queries posted above *are* missing a space - there needs to be a space before inserting the table prefix but not after, as Simon explained, but the query above is missing a space after LIKE.

I hope this helps - I'm afraid it might just be more confusing.