Re: NULL in arrays - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Jim C. Nasby
Subject Re: NULL in arrays
Date
Msg-id 20061107011632.GB82611@nasby.net
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: NULL in arrays  (Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org>)
Responses Re: NULL in arrays  (Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net>)
List pgsql-hackers
On Sun, Nov 05, 2006 at 09:53:08PM +0100, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> Note that the constructs:
> 
> ARRAY['a',"NULL",'c']
> 
> and
> 
> '{a,"NULL",c}'
> 
> are *completely* different. The first is a special array constructor
> and all its parameters are normal SQL expressions, so you can reference
> columns and use NULL directly without quotes. The latter is the string
> value of the array, which is specially decoded. Thats why the latter
> treats the double quotes differently.

This could probably be expanded on in the docs... mentioning the
difference in the NULLs section would be a good start. IE:

To set an element of an array constant to NULL, write NULL  for the
element value. (Any upper- or lower-case variant of NULL will do.) If
you want an actual string value "NULL", you must put double quotes
around it. Note that if you use the ARRAY construct you should just use
a bareword NULL instead.
-- 
Jim Nasby                                            jim@nasby.net
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)


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