bug on CHAR_LENGTH function ?

Started by Jose' Soaresover 27 years ago2 messages
#1Jose' Soares
jose@sferacarta.com

Hi all,

Seems that CHAR_LENGTH function has a bug.
It doesn't work if you try to have the length of columns with nulls.
Example:

insert into c values('foo');
insert into c values(NULL);
insert into c values('');

select b from c;
b
-------
foo
<-- this is a NULL
<-- this is a ''
(3 rows)

select char_length(b) from c;
ERROR: Bad (null) varchar() external representation

-- Why this error?
-- I think it should be:

length
------
3
<-- length of NULL should be "unknown" this is the behavior of
other databases
0
(3 rows)

What do you think about ?
Jose'

#2Thomas G. Lockhart
lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu
In reply to: Jose' Soares (#1)
Re: [HACKERS] bug on CHAR_LENGTH function ?

select char_length(b) from c;
ERROR: Bad (null) varchar() external representation

This is covered in our thread with Colin...

- Tom