RE: Counterquestion - is Oracle a He or a She - or an It or a

well, I don't want to start a religious thread here, but I think it is a problem that Oracle treats empty strings as nulls. an empty string is a string, allbeit a short one (just like an empty set is a set, though a small one) and thus has a datatype. a null is a marker, not a value, and has no datatype. therefore, there is (or should be) an important difference between empty strings and nulls.

cheers,

Lex.

>
> Mark W. Farnham wrote:
>
>> So I'm thinkin' Oracle is a high flyin' she, which partly
>> explains why she thinks a zero length string is a null
>> value but simultaneously understands that a numeric
>> zero is not a null.
>
> Null is not a value. Just like infinity is not a value. Null is a
> state. Or is it in this case a non-existant state? ;-)
>
> Which is why [NULL != NULL] as mathematical operations are not valid -
> state operands are required. Infinity makes this easier to grasp e.g.
> [INFINTY != INIFINTY] as the INFINITY "value" is always be greater
> than the INIFINITY+1 "value". Thus it cannot ever be a value. It is a
> state. Ditto for NULL.
>
> A string that is empty is in Oracle terms a non-existant string. E.g.
> with a trailing NULL string column in a table, *nothing* is stored.
> NULL simply means that there is no value for that column or variable.
>
> Now you can argue that there's a difference between an empty string
> and a null string.. and I will simply point out that this difference
> is the same as the mathematical difference between (INFINITY+1) and
> INFINITY. I.e. an empty string has no value. Do not think of that
> "emptiness" as a valid string value. Sheez, how can it when it does
> not contain a single character?
>
> The way that Oracle deals with nulls has always made sense to me,
> especially from an OO programming viewpoint. So I honestly do not see
> what the issue is about Oracle and NULLs that seems to be an issue for
> others.
>
> --
> Billy
>
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