Yes, there is a point for checking that a nil pointer is not passed to
the constructor of std::string.  The change will be checked in shortly.

John


On 1/24/12 1:35 PM, Dominique Prunier wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> About nulls, i do agree with you. I'm not shocked to say "NULL <=> <empty 
> string>", as far as i know, it is what Oracle does.
> The attached patch should fix my issue for categories. Later on, we could 
> check a few things about bundles (more specifically, colValue::write) to make 
> them more consistent.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: K. John Wu [mailto:[email protected]] 
> Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 4:30 PM
> To: Dominique Prunier
> Cc: FastBit Users
> Subject: Re: [FastBit-users] ibis::relic::keys performance and CATEGORY 
> columns
> 
> Hi, Dominique,
> 
> The intention was to not have NULL values in the results.  The query
> answering function take into account of the null masks to eliminate
> NULL values.  Internally, strings are represented as std::string.  The
> constructor can not usually take a nil pointer.  The particular error
> might due to this problem with passing a nil to std::string
> constructor.  Anyway, there might be an issue if we have a NULL in the
> answer set.  It could be worthwhile to look into this further.
> 
> The problem with NULL string values is that all three forms you've
> suggested could be valid string values.  Presumably, we could settle
> on one, say the empty string "".  This might be the most reasonable
> choice as the CSV reader actually will treat empty strings as NULL
> values.  This probably means that other database systems output empty
> strings for NULL values.
> 
> John
> 
> On 1/24/12 12:40 PM, Dominique Prunier wrote:
>> Hmm, just discovered something bad with the patch. If the key is 0
>> (which means NULL), the new ibis::category::selectStrings fails
>> with "basic_string::_S_construct NULL not valid". The is no clear
>> convention for what is a null string in FastBit interfaces ("",
>> NULL, "<NULL>") but i guess an empty string would be the best fit
>> here, right ?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
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