Re: So what's null then if it's not nothing?

In article <1135163934.902445.173900_at_o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, boston103_at_hotmail.com says...
>
> "In any case, I'm not interested in defending how SQL NULLs work" is a
> non sequitur. I did not ask whether or not you were interested in
> "defending how SQL NULLs work" but rather what '+' means in *your*,
> not SQL'92's, suggestion to evaluate 2 + X to NULL if X happens to be
> NULL:
You have misunderstood me, then. I'm not proposing another way of handling NULLs, just better language design and better(?) explanations. '+' means perfectly normal addition, but if any term is null, an exception is thrown, effectively ignoring the other terms. Whether this actually constitutes a senseless, logic-killing redefinition of addition is something I don't have strong viewpoints on. It seems to work reasonably well in SQL, and my kind of explanation is easier to grasp (for me, at least) than the notion that NULL is a value of all types which is not equal to itself; and that all domains are not what they seem, but extended domains with strange operators. But again, I consider it a matter of language design and formulations of definitions, not logic.

-- 
Jon