Posted by Gordon Burditt on 04/18/06 00:50

>I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
>will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
>on.

If you're putting a list of values in a single field, that represents
a one-to-many relationship, and calls for use of another table.
For example, a table called Ingredients which contains the
ingredient, quantity, and ID of the recipe to which it belongs.

>I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
>itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
>to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
>function to send the elements into an array?
>
>Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
>suggestions?

Use another table.

Gordon L. Burditt

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