At 09:43 PM 16/02/2007, you wrote:

>Unfortunately I have lots of code like
>Select a.bla,b.bla,c.bla
>from (taba a join tabb b)left outer join tabc c
>
>The presence of these brackets breaks the parser. I know Helen has told me
>that the use of brackets in the 'from' is 'not correct syntax' but I have
>been using it for years, it worked in V4.3Aa and it is accepted by the
>engine.
>
>I have a huge task getting rid of the brackets especially as a lot of SQL is
>generated in code and it is sometimes difficult to see both ends of the
>brackets.
>
>Should the parser be 'fixed' or are we officially declaring the use of
>brackets in 'from' illegal?

Brackets in 'from' are legal, just not the way you are using
them. You can (and sometimes need to) bracket the join conditions, i.e.

from tableA a
join tableB b on (........)

I'm curious about where you picked up the idea of bracketing
everything including the ON .... It's not even provided as an
optional syntax under the standard, as far I can find out...

Helen