Date: 2008jan14 Language: sql Q. What's the nicest way to do a MYSQL INSERT? A. Many textbooks and tutorials suggest a syntax like this:

INSERT mytable (name, address) VALUES('Bill', '123 Main St'); # Error prone

But when you get a big list of fields its easy to make a mistake alining the field names and values. Also its hard for somebody to verify latter that its correct. So use the following syntax that Mysql permits:

INSERT mytable SET name='Bill', address='123 Main St'; # Nice

The name/values are together and as a bonus its even slightly shorter. This syntax is has always been used for UPDATEs but not many people use it for INSERT - they should. Unfortunately, at time of writing, this syntax does NOT work with the current version of Postgresql (8.2.6). Related http://www.davekb.com/search.php?target=perl+DBI http://www.davekb.com/search.php?target=mysql