Re: no value fetch - Mailing list pgsql-general

From jseymour@linxnet.com (Jim Seymour)
Subject Re: no value fetch
Date
Msg-id 20040728112343.BF8A84311@jimsun.linxnet.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: no value fetch  (Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone.bigpanda.com>)
List pgsql-general
Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone.bigpanda.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 27 Jul 2004, BRINER Cedric wrote:
>
> > hi,
> >
> > Imagine that I have the following table where ts_sent is a timestamp(0)
> >
> > select * from notification;
> >       to_used        | ts_sent                 |   from
> > ---------------------+-------------------------+---------
> >  amanda@obs.unige.ch |  2004-07-21 14:19:43+02 | amanda
> >  amanda@obs.unige.ch |                         | postgres
> >
> > and so, how do I do to fetch the second line by asking :
> > catch me the line where ts_sent doesn't have a value !
> >
> > I've try:
> > select * from notification where ts_sent = null ;
>
> Use ts_sent IS NULL, not ts_sent = null.
>
> Pretty much, <anything> = null returns null.

To expand on this... This is because NULL is nothing.  Not zero, but
*nothing*.  Being nothing, it cannot "equal" anything.  Not even
itself.  But a space can *contain* nothing.  And it can contain "not
nothing."

Jim

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