News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on SELECT wat FROM sql. Parent comment

Re:SELECT wat FROM sql by progval on Monday April 27, 2020 @03:06AM (#22993586)
> The same applies with two people known to have no middle name—where you store a zero length string.

I think that's the thing. People use NULL to mean empty value, instead of unknown value.

Not necessarily for strings because there's the empty string, but for numeric fields, including foreign keys

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:SELECT wat FROM sql by sjwright on Monday April 27, 2020 @07:27AM (#22994801)
Admittedly non-string fields do make me wish for two kinds of NULL so I can differentiate between zero, confirmed-nothing and unknown. But it's never been an issue for me in practice.
[ Parent | on HN ]