Hannu Krosing <hannu@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
> In some previous mail Tom Lane claimed that by SQL standard
> either an array of all NULLs or a record with all fields NULLs (I
> don't remember which) is also considered NULL. If this is true,
> then an empty array - which can be said to consist of nothing
> but NULLs - should itself be NULL.
What I think you're referring to is that the spec says that "foo IS
NULL" should return true if foo is a record containing only null fields.
That's a fairly narrow statement. It does NOT say that NULL and
(NULL,NULL,...) are indistinguishable for all purposes; only that
this particular test doesn't distinguish them. Also I don't think they
have the same statement for arrays.
The analogy to other aggregates is probably a better thing to argue
from. On the other hand, I don't know anyone outside the SQL standards
committee who thinks it's actually a good idea that SUM() across no rows
returns null rather than zero.
regards, tom lane
