Re: Nulls get converted to 0 problem

On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Jon Earle wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Jun 2003 terry@ashtonwoodshomes.com wrote:
>
> > Oracle *incorrectly* interprets blank (empty) strings as NULL.  They are NOT
> > the same.  A string of zero characters is a string nonetheless.  A NULL is
> > "the absence of value", which equals nothing (theoretically not even another
> > NULL).
>
> If you're testing a value, you're testing to see if there's something in
> there or not - what difference does it make if the variable contains 0, ""
> or NULL?
>
> Why not adhere to the practices inherent (and thus anticipated by
> developers) in other languages (C comes to mind) where 0, NULL and "" are
> equivalent?

Because SQL already defines what NULL means to be something else, it's an
unknown value. Also, in C, NULL and "" are different and not very
equivalent (try passing strcmp a NULL rather than empty string on many
systems ;) )