Developer Tip: Don’t Paste SQL Results Into Emails
If you’re a developer who has to communicate with other people at all here’s a tip. Do not paste SQL results into emails.
The output from the MySQL command line is intended to be displayed in a monospace font so the columns line up neatly. There’s no guarantee your email will be read in a monospace font. It’s very likely it won’t be.
It’s going to wrap. For results containing many columns it will wrap a lot and will be unreadable. This does not communicate information.
Even if the query results were properly formatted nobody wants to stare at them long enough to interpret the data contained within.
It’s lazy. You’re saying to the recipient, “I can’t be bothered to actually answer your question so here’s some database rows. Chew on that.”
Instead, just provide a quick textual summary of what you need to say. Something that succinctly answers the question. If you want to provide a query or two for the recipient to run on their own time that’s fine. But don’t make it a requirement of understanding what you need to say.
