On Mon, 2002-07-15 at 06:06, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> > > We could name the fields "________dropped_x" sort of thing perhaps????
> >
> > In practice that would certainly work, especially if we increase
> > NAMEDATALEN to 128 or so, as has been proposed repeatedly.
>
> Well, x is just an integer anyway, so even with 32 it's not a problem...
>
> In case anyone was wondering btw, if a column named 'dropped_1' already
> exists when you drop column 1 in the table, it will be renamed like this:
>
> dropped1_1
>
> And if that also exists, it will become
>
> dropped2_1
>
> etc. I put that extra number after dropped and not at the end so prevent it
> being off the end of a 32 character name.
>
> > Alternatively, we could invest a lot of work to make it possible for
> > attname to be NULL, but I don't see the payoff...
>
> Yeah, I think a weird name should be good enough...
perhaps starting it with spaces instead of _ would make it even harder
to write by accident, so tha name could be " dropped 0000000001"
or to make it even more self documenting store the drop time,
" col001 dropped@020715.101427"
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Hannu