>
> I still remember a post from somebody on the phpbuilder site that had
> changed a field from varchar to date and all the dates he had got changed
> to 0000-00-00.
>
> He most unimpressed, especially since he (being typical of a lot of MySQL
> users) didn't have a backup.
>
Ah, yes. Classic.
I was talking about a development scenario. Anyone who changes a huge amount
of important data to a new form without a clearly defined algorithm is not
making a wise choice. That's kind of like if you have a perl script operating
on an important file: you don't want it to just kill all your data, so you do
a few tests first.
And it really is a minor matter of convenience. I end up dropping and
recreating all my tables a lot in the early stages of development, which is
mildly annoying. Certainly not as bad, I suppose, as if you're led to believe
that a feature does something safely, and it kills all your data.
So, you're right. It's probably better that it's never implemented.
Regards,Jeff