RE: [HACKERS] Associative Operators? (Was: Re: [NOVICE] Out of f rying pan, into fire)

Speaking of decode, this would be another valuable function to have.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ross J. Reedstrom [SMTP:reedstrm(at)rice(dot)edu]
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 1999 4:59 PM
To: hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Associative Operators? (Was: Re:
[NOVICE] Out of frying pan, into fire)

Clark Evans wrote:
>
<snipped discussion of 'something || NULL ' returning non-NULL>

> However, I'm unaware of any other exceptions in the Oracle
> database on this issue. I believe that user defined functions
> are not allowed to have special NULL treatment -- perhaps
> Oracle has DECODE and NVL hard coded deep in the guts of
> their query processor, while the other functions arn't.
>
> Would a compromise be to add DECODE and NVL ?

What do DECODE and NVL do?

Ross
--
Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm(at)rice(dot)edu>
NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
Computer and Information Technology Institute
Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005