UNION and ORDER BY ... IS NULL ASC - Mailing list pgsql-sql

From A.M.
Subject UNION and ORDER BY ... IS NULL ASC
Date
Msg-id 1E4E6631-670A-11D7-89FA-0030657192DA@cmu.edu
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: UNION and ORDER BY ... IS NULL ASC  (Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone23.bigpanda.com>)
Re: UNION and ORDER BY ... IS NULL ASC  (Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>)
List pgsql-sql
  PostgreSQL 7.3.2 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC 2.95.3

I have come across some unexpected behavior while dealing with a UNION 
and ORDER BY. I'd like some advice. Here's a scenario where I want to 
order by null values:

CREATE TABLE test(a int);
SELECT a FROM test UNION SELECT a FROM test ORDER BY a IS NULL ASC;

returns:

ERROR:  ORDER BY on a UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT result must be on one of 
the result columns

whereas:

SELECT a FROM test UNION SELECT a FROM test ORDER BY a;

works fine. The column name is the same in both queries, yet I get an 
error! Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification of what I want to 
do, but I couldn't get it working in this minimal case. I also tried 
using the column number, and that returns the same results as the name. 
What am I doing wrong? Thanks for any info.><><><><><><><><><
AgentM
agentm@cmu.edu



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