Re: NULLS when col is NOT NULL ??

From: Ed prochak <ed.prochak_at_magicinterface.com>
Date: 26 Aug 2004 10:47:29 -0700
Message-ID: <4b5394b2.0408260947.67374069@posting.google.com>

Frank van Bortel <fvanbortel_at_netscape.net> wrote in message news:<cgk41j$uol$1_at_news5.tilbu1.nb.home.nl>...
> Joel Garry wrote:
>
> > Ed Stevens <nospam_at_noway.nohow> wrote in message news:<6l2pi0pfsptulfkmdo2t48vn9bqt153mqi_at_4ax.com>...
> >
> >>On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:21:00 -0500, Ed Stevens <nospam_at_noway.nohow>
> >>wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>So . . . to further clarify my understanding, given a column defined
> >>as CHAR(8) (fixed length, not VARCHAR -- and nulls allowed), if x'00'
> >>is not a 'representation' of nulls, what is physically stored in the 8
> >>bytes reserved for that column?
> >
> >
> > This ought to be even more confusing, as it appears '' and null are
> > both octal 377 followed by a newline:
> >
>
> [snip!]
> The Oracle RDBMS will interpret '' as null, one of the non-ANSI
> compliancies of Oracle. Looks like it's actually stored as high_values
> (octal 377 being 0xff, or all 1's).

And just to clarify a bit. the 0x00 in ASCII is spelled NUL ONLY ONE LETTER L. so NULL is relational DBMS speak for nothing and NUL is ASCII for the nul (0x00) character.

Hope that helps future discussions.
Ed Received on Thu Aug 26 2004 - 12:47:29 CDT