Re: Combining text fields

Doug Silver wrote:
> I just want to confirm that this is the correct behavior for the return value
> when combining text fields together.  If one of the fields is NULL, then the
> return value of field1+field2 also becomes NULL.  If this is correct, is the
> proper way to get around this to use a default value of '' for such fields?

This is correct behaviour (every comparison with NULL returns NULL)

http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/functions-comparison.html
-------------------------------8<----------------------------------------
Some applications may (incorrectly) require that expression = NULL
returns true if expression evaluates to the null value. To support these
applications, the run-time option transform_null_equals can be turned on
(e.g., SET transform_null_equals TO ON;). PostgreSQL will then convert x
= NULL clauses to x IS NULL. This was the default behavior in releases
6.5 through 7.1.
-------------------------------8<----------------------------------------

HTH
--
  e-Trolley Sayegh & John, Nabil Sayegh
  Tel.: 0700 etrolley /// 0700 38765539
  Fax.: +49 69 8299381-8
  PGP : http://www.e-trolley.de