Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

freetds - Re: [freetds] freebcp: add support for escaping characters?

freetds AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: FreeTDS Development Group

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Bort, Paul" <pbort AT tmwsystems.com>
  • To: "FreeTDS Development Group" <freetds AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [freetds] freebcp: add support for escaping characters?
  • Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:50:56 -0500

>
> Ahem. I understand they're technically different, of course,
> but how are
> they semantically different? Which user can tell the
> difference between a
> null field and a zero-length string? And what is the
> difference between
> an empty field and a field that's empty?
>

Just a quick example from my current project of how '' and NULL are
different and that difference can be important:

We have a table that holds user settings, and a null ( or a missing row
) means that the default (from a separate table) should be used. OTOH,
if the column is an empty string, that means that the setting should be
an empty string, even if the default says otherwise. If a setting is a
file prefix, an empty string is a reasonable value.





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page