Re: min() and NaN - Mailing list pgsql-sql

From Stephan Szabo
Subject Re: min() and NaN
Date
Msg-id 20030722112906.M39399-100000@megazone.bigpanda.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: min() and NaN  (Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>)
Responses Re: min() and NaN  (Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>)
List pgsql-sql
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Well, my 2 cents is that though we consider NULL when ordering via ORDER
> BY, we ignore it in MAX because it really isn't a value, and NaN seems
> to be similar to NULL.
>
> When doing ORDER BY, we have to put the NULL value somewhere, so we put
> it at the end, but with aggregates, we aren't required to put the NULL
> somewhere, so we ignore it.  Should that be the same for NaN?  I just
> don't see how we can arbitrarly say it is greater/less than other
> values.

But we already do. When doing a less than/greater than comparison, 'NaN'
is considered greater than normal values which is different from NULL
which returns unknown for both.



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