Collection name with dash (-) symbol raises reference error on JavaScript shell arangosh

[ghost]

OS version: Ubuntu 12.10

Shell version:

Welcome to arangosh 1.2.3. Copyright (c) triAGENS GmbH
Using Google V8 3.16.14 JavaScript engine, READLINE 6.2, ICU 4.8.1.1

Connected to ArangoDB 'tcp://localhost:8529' version 1.2.3

Steps to recreate:

arangosh> db._createEdgeCollection("has-emails");
[ArangoCollection 21131514, "has-emails" (type edge, status loaded)]

arangosh> db.has-emails
JavaScript exception in file '(shell)' at 1,8: ReferenceError: emails is not defined
!db.has-emails
! ^
stacktrace: ReferenceError: emails is not defined
at (shell):1:8

Collections without a dash (-) symbol works well.

arangosh> db.has_emails
[ArangoCollection 22835450, "has_emails" (type edge, status loaded)]

arangosh> db.entity
[ArangoCollection 9597178, "entity" (type document, status loaded)]

[F21]

Because has-emails is not valid dot notation syntax for accessing properties in javascript, you can use this alternative syntax (brackets) to access properties that cannot be access using dot notation:

arangosh> db['has-emails']
[ArangoCollection 128359072782, "has-emails" (type edge, status loaded)]

[jsteemann]

I agree to @F21. You can create a collection with a name that contains a dash in ArangoDB.
However, using the dash name unquoted will lead to the dash being interpreted as the symbol for an arithmetic minus, and in the following leading to a JavaScript error.

This has nothing to do with ArangoDB, but is a feature of the JavaScript language. The language disallows using special characters such as the dash in identifier names.
That means you must not use something like obj.my-variable in Javascript, but instead you should use obj['my-variable'].

[ghost]

In my humble opinion, we should then not allow collection names with the underscore (_), or the dash (-) symbol . It is not consistent.

https://github.com/triAGENS/ArangoDB/wiki/NamingConventions

[F21]

The underscore is needed though, because they are used for naming system collections, like _users.

[jsteemann]

The underscore is actually allowed in JavaScript identifiers, too.
You can use variable names such as _foo or even _ in JavaScript. There is even a JS library named underscore, and the convention is to reference the library from a variable named _.

And I think there is no problem with allowing the dash for collection names, too.
You have to make sure that you properly quote the table names, as you would in any other database.
You also want to make sure you properly quote names when putting parameters into URLs or into strings. Otherwise you're vulnerable to parameter injection etc.

Btw. in Javascript you can even have attribute names such as

"foo" & "bar"

by using them properly quoted:

a = { "\"foo\" & \"bar\"" : "some value" };
a["\"foo\" & \"bar\""];

[frankmayer]

Also, underscore is widely used for naming tables and fields in databases 😄 ,so if it's not an issue like the dash is, maybe we should probably let this one pass (even if it's not consistent 😄 ).