Re: [HACKERS] Re: Comparisons on NULLs (was Re: A small problem...)

On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:

> Thus spake Tom Lane
> > >> but I can see the reasonableness of defining "3 != NULL" as TRUE.
> >
> > > Actually I see it as FALSE. That's what I was suggesting earlier. All
> > > comparisons to null should be false no matter what the sense of the
> > > test.
> >
> > Hmm. That yields extremely unintuitive results for = and !=. That is,
> >
> > SELECT * FROM t WHERE b = NULL;
> >
> > will never return any rows, even if there are some where b is null;
>
> Hmmm. That would be a problem. Of course, we could treat the null
> value at the higher level too. I guess that's why we have the "IS
> NULL" syntax in the first place. It is different than comparing the
> actual values.
>
> Marc, how long can we hold 6.4 while we work this all out?

How long can we hold *what*? Is this a new bug that didn't exist
in previous version of PostgreSQL?

Marc G. Fournier
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy(at)hub(dot)org secondary: scrappy(at){freebsd|postgresql}.org