Space character within symbol literals

Question

I need to query a database which contains names of companies. I have list of around 50 names, for which i have to get the data. But I am unable to write a query using in command as there spaces in a name which are not being recognized. ex

select from sales where name in (`Coca Cola, `Pepsi)

This is giving me an error as 'Cola' is not being recognized. Is there a way to write such a query?

Veinule

Answer 1

The spaces between the strings cause the interpreter to get confused. The `$() casts the list of characters to symbols.

q)t:([] a:1 2 3; name:`$("coca cola";"pepsi";"milk"))

q)select from t where name in `$("coca cola";"pepsi")
a name
-----------
1 coca cola
2 pepsi

You may also want to be careful of casing and either use consistently lower or upper case else that would cause unexpected empty results:

q)select from t where name in `$("Coca Cola";"Pepsi")
a name
------

q)select from t where upper[name] in upper `$("Coca Cola";"Pepsi")
a name
-----------
1 coca cola
2 pepsi

Harijan

Answer 2

You need to do something like the following:

select from sales where name in `$("Coca Cola";"Pepsi")

Reverential

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried using this, it doesn't give any error, but the query is returning zero results, whereas I know there are entries in the database. – Veinule

what type is the name column? – Reverential