Condition within JOIN or WHERE

Question

Is there any difference (performance, best-practice, etc...) between putting a condition in the JOIN clause vs. the WHERE clause?

For example...

-- C         


        

Answer 1

Putting the condition in the join seems "semantically wrong" to me, as that's not what JOINs are "for". But that's very qualitative.

Additional problem: if you decide to switch from an inner join to, say, a right join, having the condition be inside the JOIN could lead to unexpected results.