Re: Null comparisons (was Re: checksum)

Stephan Szabo <sszabo(at)megazone(dot)bigpanda(dot)com> writes:

> > On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 20:16:52 +0200, David Helgason <david(at)uti(dot)is> wrote:
>
> > > On a similar note, I've found myself wanting an extended '=' operator
> > > meaning
> > > (a = b or (a is null and b is null))
>
> The original does appear to be equivalent to "not(a is distinct from b)",
> although I'm not sure that's necessarily easier to use than the above.

I often do things like "coalesce(a,0) = coalesce(b,0)".
(Or whatever value you know won't appear)

Though for pretty small values of "often". It always makes me think twice
about my data model when I find myself doing this. But there are definitely
still cases where it's useful and as clean as anything else I could think of.

--
greg