Re: [SQL] Re: Bug#57466: select ... except fails when there are nulls in second clause

"Oliver Elphick" <olly(at)lfix(dot)co(dot)uk> writes:
>> The following statement returns 0 rows when there is a null in table
>> second:
>> pgbug=> select value from first except select value from second;

> I think that this is not a bug at all, but a necessary consequence of how
> nulls are treated, but I would be grateful for confirmation of this.
>
> This is equivalent to saying "give me all items in first where value is
> not found in second". The point about a null is that you don't know
> what value it is, so it might be a value that you want.

Right. This might be more clear if you look at the query in the form
that it gets rewritten into:

SELECT value FROM first WHERE value <> ALL (SELECT value FROM second);

which in turn can be visualized as

WHERE (first.value <> second.value1) AND
(first.value <> second.value2) AND
...
(first.value <> second.valueN);

If any of the values coming from second are NULL, then the result of the
AND cannot be TRUE: it can only be FALSE ("there's definitely a matching
value") or NULL ("I don't know whether there's a matching value").

Postgres 6.5.* does have some bugs in this area, because various places
fail to implement proper three-valued boolean logic; in particular
nodeSubplan.c didn't return a NULL boolean result when it should have.
(That makes no difference in this example, but would make a difference
if the result of the subselect operator were combined with other boolean
clauses.) I believe I've fixed all those problems for 7.0.

regards, tom lane