Programming practice (Re: [prog] MySQL connections from PHP files - Close or keep it open for queries?)

[Mary]

On Mon, May 02, 2005, Jacinta Richardson wrote:
>    Did you notice that strange question mark in my search_entry function up 
> there?  Hopefully it's not that strange.  That's a placeholder.  I write a 
> ? where I'd otherwise write data and then allow the database driver to make 
> sure it's properly quoted and handled.

It can be useful to make your editor highlight placeholders that you
intend to replace later: vim highlights "FIXME", "TODO" and "XXX" by
default although this is adaptable.

Some people also find that it's a good idea to have a the program check
for placeholders at a high level and fail, because otherwise you can
forget to take them out again. The failures act like a todo list. Tim
Bray discusses it here:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/01/18/TestingOrder

-Mary