Ferdinand Gassauer wrote:
On Friday 30 March 2007 10:19:35 Richard Huxton wrote:
Don't forget to cc: the list!
snip
OK this shortens the function, but does not help to "solve" the coalesce
problem
coalecse(empty2null(var1),empty2null(var2),....empty2null(var-n))
instead of
coalecse2(var1,var2,...var-n)
where the empty2null is doing it's job "inside" the coalesce.
Well, you can always write the four or five variations you want:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION coalesce_and_blank(varchar) ...
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION coalesce_and_blank(varchar,varchar) ...
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION coalesce_and_blank(varchar,varchar,varchar) ...
OK - this is a solution I didn't think off , because other system do not allow
this sort of "overloading".
Nevertheless I think
* coalesce takes n arguments, which would need the user to write n functions
to fully cover the functionality - even though I think it's seldom to have
more than 4-5 arguments.
* looking through Google it IS a concern for many others and thus this
function should be distributed as default.
Hmm - I see it coming up occasionally, but usually where people are
misusing NULLs.
What you might want to do is tidy up a function and post it to the list
for the record. Or, you could start a project on pgfoundry to share it.
--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd
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