Re: IFNULL -> COALESCE

Oh, i'd agree - it's not really worth the hassle adding the code to
automatically do this. Useful to have it mentioned in the archives so
someone else coming up against the same issue can pick up on it
quicker...

Got me thinking about an option for ecpg to report about any
non-standard/user-defined functions used in the source (which of
course it assumes are such and just lets them through). Also that
'sqlca is included by default' message added for 7.2 is annoying!

And Bruce, yeah there's a lock ;)

Regards, Lee Kindness.

Tom Lane writes:
> Lee Kindness <lkindness(at)csl(dot)co(dot)uk> writes:
> > Okay, lets try that again...
> > SELECT IFNULL(MAX(id), 0) + 1 from test;
> > can be replaced by the following PostgreSQL query:
> > SELECT COALESCE(MAX(id), 0) + 1 from test;
>
> For any specific datatype that you might need this for, you could
> provide a user-defined IFNULL function to avoid having to translate
> your code. Might get a bit tedious if you are doing it for a lot
> of different datatypes, however.
>
> Not sure if it's worth adding a keyword and a grammar production
> to get Postgres to do this for you. If it were part of a full-court
> press to improve our Oracle compatibility, I wouldn't object, but
> I'm not sure I see the point of doing just the one nonstandard
> feature.
>
> regards, tom lane