Message-Id: <25956.338506@fatcity.com> From: "Mercadante, Thomas F" Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 15:22:40 -0400 Subject: RE: Empty String is interpreted as NULL Reuben, While I agree that an empty string is not logically equal to a null, Oracle interprets an empty string in INSERT and UPDATE statements as a NULL. So you really do not have a choice here. If you have the need to insert an empty string into a column, you have two choices: - Define a character to represent an empty string and insert that character (pretty dumb suggestion) - Change the table to allow null values in that column, and perform the INSERT as your example showed. Good Luck and hope these helped. Tom Mercadante Oracle Certified Professional -----Original Message----- From: Reuben D. Budiardja [mailto:techlist@voyager.phys.utk.edu] Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Empty String is interpreted as NULL Hello all, Suppose I have this table SQL> DESC FRUIT Name Null? Type ----------------------------------------- -------- ORANGE NOT NULL VARCHAR2(10) APPLE NOT NULL VARCHAR2(10) If I do this insert: SQL> / INSERT INTO FRUIT VALUES ('hello', '') * ERROR at line 1: ORA-01400: cannot insert NULL into ("LIGHTCONE"."FRUIT"."APPLE") I got an error cannot insert NULL. But, what if I meant is to insert empty string '' ? Certainly empty string is NOT equal to NULL values. So how do I get around this? Thanks in advance for any help. Reuben D. Budiardja -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Reuben D. Budiardja INET: techlist@voyager.phys.utk.edu Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: ListGuru@fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).