Re: Orafce concat operator - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Pavel Stehule
Subject Re: Orafce concat operator
Date
Msg-id 162867791002100631u929b8bavb1b2706540a97cfe@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Orafce concat operator  (Yeb Havinga <yebhavinga@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: Orafce concat operator  (Yeb Havinga <yebhavinga@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-general
2010/2/10 Yeb Havinga <yebhavinga@gmail.com>:
> Hello list,
>
> The Orafce compatibility package doesn't seem to have operators defined
> (looked in the sql load file). The function I'm specifically interested in,
> is Oracle's concatenation that regards a NULL as the empty string and hence
> returns 'the other value'. This in contrast with Pg's || that returns NULL
> if either of the operands is NULL. The Orafce package contains a concat
> function with Oracle behaviour, however an operator is missing.
>
> Having an associative operator has benefits over having only a function,
> since that would make translating expressions like 'monkey' || 'nut' || NULL
> easy.
>
> What about adding something like operator ||| in the orafce package for
> concat?


no, it could be confusing and it isn't enough, because it isn't only
|| or concat problem. On Oracle empty string is equal to NULL and NULL
is equal to empty string.

example: '' is null, length('')

http://www.thunderguy.com/semicolon/2003/04/26/oracle-empty-string-null/

so we are not able emulate this behave.

Regards
Pavel Stehule


>
> Regards,
> Yeb Havinga
>
>
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