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Comment by mr_toad | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat off topic, but Oracle database connection strings seem to be a form of Lisp. It makes me wonder why they would choose that.

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I looked them up, and they’re not lisp (or s-expressions)

    SERVER=(DESCRIPTION (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=MyHost)(PORT=MyPort))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=MyOracleSID)));uid=myUsername;pwd=myPassword;

Let me guess... if they're a form of Lisp, did someone add jndi support, then made it possible to print to the console while the string gets read and finally made it executable because who wouldn't want a LISP for-loop in an Oracle connection string? On to the next RCE...

Nah, they are pretty constrained data description. AFAIK, you can't even substitute environment variables.

They are also apparently very hard to use, to the point that many people can't and several web sites exist that will take your database server, username, and password and assemble a connection string for you. (I can see no issues with that! None!)

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