Should you always end mysql queries with “or die?”

Question

Example queries in some tutorials ALWAYS end with:

or die(mysql_error());  

I can see why you would would sometimes want to do this, but t

Answer 1

but they even use this for queries that really shouldn't cause a problem

Even the simplest SELECT * FROM FOO can cause a problem if the network between the web server and the database server falls over. It's good practice because when dealing with external systems such as databases, you really can't ever assume that something is 'safe'.

In production code, you may not wish to use die() to handle errors - you could perhaps run some custom code to deal with it. At any rate, you should definitely handle the error in one way or another, and die() is a good way to start.