Re: RFC: A brief guide to nulls - Mailing list pgsql-sql

From Bruno Wolff III
Subject Re: RFC: A brief guide to nulls
Date
Msg-id 20030115204129.GA16969@wolff.to
Whole thread Raw
In response to RFC: A brief guide to nulls  (dev@archonet.com)
List pgsql-sql
On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 17:23:09 -0000, dev@archonet.com wrote:
> 
> How do nulls work?
> ==================
> There is one very important rule when dealing with nulls. The result of
> any operation or comparison, when applied to a null is null. The only
> exception is testing if a value is null.

I suggest rephrasing this to make it clear you need to use is null to
do this and that = null won't do what you expect.

> If you try to perform an operation on nulls, again the result is always
> null. So the results of all of the following are null:

The above isn't true (i.e. null op something isn't ALWAYS null). For example:

bruno=> select 't'::boolean or null;?column?
----------t
(1 row)


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