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

From: Billy Verreynne (JW) <VerreyB_at_telkom.co.za>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 10:07:53 +0200
Message-ID: <445F36B0271AE1419CEE0B9589044B433747B8@TYGRRA01-XCS00.telkom.co.za>

Lex de Haan [mailto:lex.de.haan_at_naturaljoin.nl] wrote:

> 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.

Lex, then why is a NULL numeric not confusing then?

Can you get an "empty" numeric variable? No! It is a null variable.

Why treat a string variable differently then?

A numeric variable either has a value (-1, 0 or billions). Or not. When it does not have a value it is considered a NULL.

A string variable is no different. There is no such thing as an

"empty" string. Just as there is not such thing as an "empty" numeric,
or an "empty" date, or an "empty" bool, or an "empty" pointer, or an
"empty" <insert your favouriote datatype here>. It is either NULL or

it has a value. AS SIMPLE AS THAT!!

So why treat string variables differently than all other data types!? Magically we now have "empty" strings despite the fact that an "empty" variable in ALL other data types are considered null. Does not compute.

Nothing religious about it. Unless common sense and logic are considered a religion?

--
Billy

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Received on Mon Aug 01 2005 - 03:09:59 CDT