Re: Special Characters in Tables and Views

From: Palooka <nobody_at_nowhere.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:25:37 +0100
Message-ID: <BvfYl.26914$Bl5.11782_at_newsfe11.ams2>



Chip Martin wrote:
> On Jun 11, 10:49Â am, joel garry <joel-ga..._at_home.com> wrote:

>> On Jun 11, 9:07Â am, gazzag <gar..._at_jamms.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On 11 June, 16:48, c-mart <cmar..._at_fulcrum.net> wrote:
>>>> Greetings All,
>>>> Just wondering about the significance of table names and views with a
>>>> dollar sign $. Â Is there a special case in where you would want to
>>>> build a table with a '$'
>>>> Sorry if this seems elementary, Â I tried to find the answer on
>>>> metalink and online but to no avail.
>>>> Cheers!
>>> $ views are internal to Oracle and owned by SYS. Â I would suggest that
>>> you don't create your own objects with "$" in their names.
>>> HTH
>>> -g
>> Speculation here, but I've always had the idea this came from the PDP
>> and VMS worlds, where $ meant things - in RSTS it meant the privileged
>> user, in VMS it was a separator in system routine names, separating
>> the service and function parts of the routines. Â So it became a nono
>> for people to use, in case they screwed up the system with their own
>> routines because of a naming collision, but of course, every
>> programmer secretly wants people to think they are an internals
>> expert.
>>
>> There are a number of naming convention docs floating about, as well
>> as an old joke on OTN where someone claimed to have an Oracle doc, and
>> for years people would ask to be sent it, posting their email online.
>> This seems well done: Â http://www.gplivna.eu/papers/naming_conventions.htm
>>
>> jg
>> --
>> _at_home.com is bogus.
>> "What are u gonna do fire me for volunteering for the special olympics
>> hahaha ur crazy . . . ”  - Carrie Prejean, fired as Miss California
>> for cause. Â (quote from email to Keith Lewis, executive director of
>> the Miss California USA)
> 
> Thanks all, my question had more to do with the significance or
> relevance of the dollar sign more than anything else.  There must be a
> reason for it, I think Joel is on to something but from his response,
> it was just speculation.
> 
> I was playing around with the model clause in the SH schema provided
> in 10g, noticed that some of the tables (and even indexes) had $ in
> the names (DR$SUP_TEXT_IDX$N), while I have seen and used V$ tables/
> views before I just always assumed that they were reserved for
> internal purposes only and just left it at that.  When I saw the five
> tables and one index in SH it just got me thinking why the '$'.
> 
> Thanks again.

There is no special functionality; it's just a convention. Let Oracle use the dollar sign, and give your own application tables sensible names, as Mark Powell suggests.

Palooka Received on Thu Jun 11 2009 - 17:25:37 CDT

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