douglasshuang

douglasshuang

High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails: Confusing `SUBSTR` arguments in `SCRUB_EMAIL` (page 52)

I’m having trouble understanding the intent of the start and count arguments to SUBSTR in the SCRUB_EMAIL function.

I understand that we want to return the first five or more characters from the MD5 value. The PostgreSQL documentation examples indicate that string indexes start at 1, not 0. Why does the SCRUB_EMAIL code call SUBSTR with a starting index of 0 and a count of 6 or greater? I see that the code produces the desired outcome, but wouldn’t it be equivalent and clearer to use a starting index of 1 and a count of 5 or greater?

Marked As Solved

andatki

andatki

Author of High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails

Hi @douglasshuang. Thanks for the detailed write-up again here. I don’t remember for sure whether I knew functions like substring() had 1-based indexes and not 0-based.

I studied that documentation page and didn’t explicitly see it mentioned, however it can be deduced from the examples, for example:

substring('Thomas' from 2 for 3)hom

1,2,3,4,5,6
----------
T,h,o,m,a,s

We can see it starts at position 2 “h” and goes for a count of 3 (inclusive of “m”) to get “hom”.

With that in mind, I agree the code/sql/scrub_email_function_full.sql function would be more sensible to start from 1 and go for a count of “5”.

I guess before with a count of 0 it doesn’t raise an error, but isn’t a valid index position, so that’s why it was set to 6 to get “5” characters plus 1 invalid position.

Start at 1, go for 5 is more clear!

Thanks again for finding this. I’m submitting this fix and hope it goes into a new version.

Also Liked

douglasshuang

douglasshuang

Hi @andatki, that sounds good. Thank you!

Where Next?

Popular Pragmatic Bookshelf topics Top

New
johnp
Hi Brian, Looks like the api for tinydb has changed a little. Noticed while working on chapter 7 that the .purge() call to the db throws...
New
sdmoralesma
Title: Web Development with Clojure, Third Edition - migrations/create not working: p159 When I execute the command: user=> (create-...
New
mikecargal
Title: Hands-On Rust (Chap 8 (Adding a Heads Up Display) It looks like ​.with_simple_console_no_bg​(SCREEN_WIDTH*2, SCREEN_HEIGHT*2...
New
joepstender
The generated iex result below should list products instead of product for the metadata. (page 67) iex> product = %Product{} %Pento....
New
alanq
This isn’t directly about the book contents so maybe not the right forum…but in some of the code apps (e.g. turbo/06) it sends a TURBO_ST...
New
cro
I am working on the “Your Turn” for chapter one and building out the restart button talked about on page 27. It recommends looking into ...
New
rmurray10127
Title: Intuitive Python: docker run… denied error (page 2) Attempted to run the docker command in both CLI and Powershell PS C:\Users\r...
New
jeremyhuiskamp
Title: Web Development with Clojure, Third Edition, vB17.0 (p9) The create table guestbook syntax suggested doesn’t seem to be accepted ...
New
s2k
Hi all, currently I wonder how the Tailwind colours work (or don’t work). For example, in app/views/layouts/application.html.erb I have...
New

Other popular topics Top

Devtalk
Reading something? Working on something? Planning something? Changing jobs even!? If you’re up for sharing, please let us know what you’...
1050 20964 393
New
AstonJ
A thread that every forum needs! Simply post a link to a track on YouTube (or SoundCloud or Vimeo amongst others!) on a separate line an...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell. With Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, by Bruce A. Tate, you’ll go beyond the syntax—and...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Write Elixir tests that you can be proud of. Dive into Elixir’s test philosophy and gain mastery over the terminology and concepts that u...
New
AstonJ
Or looking forward to? :nerd_face:
489 12900 264
New
AstonJ
Curious to know which languages and frameworks you’re all thinking about learning next :upside_down_face: Perhaps if there’s enough peop...
New
AstonJ
Saw this on TikTok of all places! :lol: Anyone heard of them before? Lite:
New
New
New
New

Sub Categories: