Get Computer Name/Identifier (1 Viewer)

Minty

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@Isaac You are missing the point.
Many of us here specialise in Pedantry.

We are using that here to demonstrate just how much pedantry we can get into one thread.
And as Monty Python once said, "Not enough people are wearing hats"
 

NauticalGent

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....or about as effective and shooting an elephant in the ass with a BB gun.

That being said, it IS good to now where the $ thing came from - if you use the "Covert Macro to VBA" option and include comments and error handling, it always uses "MsbBox Error$" and now I know a more about where it comes from.
 

isladogs

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@Isaac You are missing the point.
Many of us here specialise in Pedantry.

We are using that here to demonstrate just how much pedantry we can get into one thread.
And as Monty Python once said, "Not enough people are wearing hats"
Ha! Speak for yourself!
For me its just a pastime rather than a specialism :rolleyes:

Hooray - the post has been moved out of the repository so no longer any need to wait for moderator approval
 
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The_Doc_Man

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I think I can help with the perspective here, @Isaac - based on an age consideration.

When Access was first created and as recently as Ac97, computers were still in the many-megaHertz speed range. Internal bus speeds topped out at maybe 66 MHz. Instruction cycles were not as cheap as they are now. Back then, it made a big difference to do conversions. Now, though, you can do gigaHertz operations and a couple of extra instructions to allow for conversions just doesn't make a lot of difference. Therefore, having the $ to force a string return doesn't matter that much. The test for a non-string variable is so short, so brief, that you can usually ignore it.
 

Isaac

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I think I can help with the perspective here, @Isaac - based on an age consideration.

When Access was first created and as recently as Ac97, computers were still in the many-megaHertz speed range. Internal bus speeds topped out at maybe 66 MHz. Instruction cycles were not as cheap as they are now. Back then, it made a big difference to do conversions. Now, though, you can do gigaHertz operations and a couple of extra instructions to allow for conversions just doesn't make a lot of difference. Therefore, having the $ to force a string return doesn't matter that much. The test for a non-string variable is so short, so brief, that you can usually ignore it.
As always, thanks for the history lesson Doc. :) (I meant that seriously).

And lest anyone think otherwise, I am interested in efficiency, and I do believe that optimization is the holy grail of SQL development. It's just, in this context of Left$ vs. Left ........ :|
 

Pat Hartman

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This is definitely a variation along the lines of "it doesn't matter" quantity.
to put this into perspective, people are always looking for ways to make their code run faster. I used to have a link to a list of commands with their relative cost so you could see where to target your refactoring. I/O is most expensive regardless of platform. Having spent years writing CICS transactions that were run thousands of times each minute where this type of time saving was actually important because most transactions required sub-second response, I still strive to use the most efficient method. So, this is something to file away. Clearly one instance of the use of one of these functions is insignificant but if you're running code in a loop or in a query, maybe it cuts off a few seconds here and there. This is probably more important if your database is being used through Citrix or TS where the app is running on a server with all other users. That makes it closer to my old CICS environment. It's one thing to be sloppy with code that will run only on a local PC. The computer is always going to be fast enough that the average user simply won't see a difference but when dozens/hundreds/thousands of users are running the app via Citrix, they are all competing for CPU cycles from the same CPU and efficient code can make a difference, although with memory and CPU's getting cheaper every day, the site managers just throw more memory or CPU's at the problem rather than trying to fix the software inefficiencies.
 
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The_Doc_Man

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As a matter of record, there used to be a conspiracy theory out there about how Microsoft DIDN'T want to create an optimizing compiler because they WANTED you to need that next higher model so that you would HAVE to buy a bigger machine. I can't speak to whether that theory is totally hogwash, but one truth is that users kept on wanting more functionality, and that MIGHT have had just a LITTLE to do with the growth in memory requirements as time passed. But the growth in requirements inevitably reached a point where you needed more CPU power to RUN the code for all those features. Which was one more reason why computers keep on getting faster.
 

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