from Hacker News

North Yorkshire to phase out apostrophes on street signs, citing database issues

by cowsup on 5/10/24, 1:35 PM with 3 comments

• by beardyw on 5/10/24, 3:00 PM

  Scenario:

  "When we do db lookups it's easier if there is no punctuation."

  "OK, easy, let's take out the punctuation"

  Later:

  "It turns out that data is used to make Street signs"

  "Well, it's sort of a problem with the database isn't it ...."

• by cranberryturkey on 5/10/24, 1:39 PM

  so instead of properly escaping their sql queries they chose to remove the offending character from the street signs??

• by bell-cot on 5/10/24, 1:51 PM

  Obligatory XKCD reference:

  https://xkcd.com/327/