Re: [GENERAL] Making NULLs visible.

At 18:36 +0200 on 9/10/98, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> I am always looking for suggestions on how to display nulls. It is on
> the TODO list.

Here is my suggestion, admittedly a bit cheeky:

Implement an NVL function - one that dictates a NULL in a field and
converts it to whatever value is required.

Then, anybody who wants psql to display a null function can decide what is
to be displayed on a per-query basis:

SELECT a, nvl(b,'I am null!'), c
FROM tab
WHERE...

Will give something like:

a | ?column? | c
====|============|=====
10 | Moses | 100
20 | Solomon | 200
30 | I am null! | 300
40 | David | 400
50 | I am null! | 500

And so on... So, if someone wants \N, he'll put '\\N' in the NVL function,
and if they want NULL, they'll put 'NULL', etc.

NVL will be usefull for lots of stuff... Not only for this...

Herouth

--
Herouth Maoz, Internet developer.
Open University of Israel - Telem project
http://telem.openu.ac.il/~herutma