Re: sql can i substitute

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:55:45 +0530
Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon@thenilgiris.com> wrote:
> i want to write an sql statement like this:
> 
> select fruit from table
> 
> which should return 'good' if fruit = 1 and 'bad' if fruit =2 and
> 'rotten' if fruit =3

An alternative to Andreas' suggestion would be to create a simple lookup
table and join them.  This is good if the real life example can get
larger and/or the list can change and you don't want to modify code
every time it does.  

[totally made up output]
fstate_id | fstate_name
----------+-------------       1 | good       2 | bad       3 | rotten

SELECT fstate.fstate_name AS "Fruit state"
FROM table, fstate
WHERE table.fstate_id = fstate.fstate_id;

Now you can easily add another state:

INSERT INTO fstate VALUES (4, 'smelly');

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