Read the ******* Manual

First let me say I'm not a prude, but neither do I have a mouth like a toilet. But I do find the acronym RTFM incredibly offensive, it may be that some people using it don't actually know what it means and it can be said the F stands for something other than the obvious but either way I don't like it. I've nothing wrong with acronyms but what I don't like about it is the idea that you're swearing at somebody you don't even know, who in their ignorance for one reason or other didn't read a manual. Would you for example say to somebody who asks you the time "Buy a ******* watch". The other problem is often people don't actually tell you which manual it is your supposed to go and ******* read.

Anyway the point of this little rant was to tell you to go and read a manual. Well not just any manual but the MySQL Reference manual. From time to time I'll have a browse to see what's in there and from time to time I pickup some great tips. For example, I've mentioned many times (in today’s earlier blog for example) that creating script files for stored procedures and running them using source filename is a great idea, what I didn't know is that you can also use \. filename to do the same thing.

It's not the most amazing thing you can do with MySQL, in fact it wouldn’t allow me to do anything I couldn't do before but it expands my knowledge of MySQL which can only be of benefit.