Comments on: Macro Tip: Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes

By: Craig Stuntz’s Weblog : SQL-to-Code Macro

Craig Stuntz’s Weblog : SQL-to-Code Macro — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:49:05 +0000

[…] I use Delphi macros for converting SQL created in a query analysis tool into Delphi constants, and commenter Jack asked for more details on this. I thought it would make a better post than […]

By: Craig Stuntz

Craig Stuntz — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:07:47 +0000

Jack,

What I do for Evaluate is to put in something like this:

{$IFOPT D+}MyQuery.SQL.SaveToFile(Filename);{$ENDIF}

… to dump SQL to a file in debugging.

I’ll post the macro separately.

By: Jack Rodenhi

Jack Rodenhi — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:52:08 +0000

Craig,
Thanks for responding. I am sure I can go through the steps to record a macro. If I run into something, I will be sure to come back. The problem, of course, with the rectangular selection is that it will contain unevaluated variables.

I love Delphi but I have always thought it was a shame that no one ever put a multi-line variable viewer in it. The Evaluate dialog would be a perfect place. Maybe include a check box for multi-line so you could get something like
SELECT *
FROM EMPLOYEE
that you could paste directly into your query tool
rather than
SELECT *#$D#$AFROM EMPLOYEE
which has to be reformatted.

The guys at CodeGear don’t miss many opportunities to make life easier on programmers but they missed this one.

-Jack

By: Craig Stuntz

Craig Stuntz — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:29:34 +0000

Jack,

I don’t know any way to share a Delphi macro other than to describe how to make it. Is that what you would like to see?

For going the other way (from the Delphi editor to a query tool), I generally use rectangular select (hold down the Alt key while dragging the mouse to select).

By: Jack Rodenhi

Jack Rodenhi — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:15:30 +0000

I will have to check this out. I do most of my SQL in IBExpert. I copy it into Ultra-Edit with Alt-V which is a hot key that does the necessary reformatting, then selects all of the text and copies it to the clipboard. From there I can switch to Delphi and paste it in. Is it possible to share your macro like I can with Ultra-Edit?

Do you have a tip for going the other way? The Delphi IDE does not have a memo control for transferring multi-line text. I have been sending to TraceTool, but I still get the line numbers there which necessitates a trip though Ultra-Edit where I can get rid of them using column editing.