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Sean Busbey commented on AVRO-1482: ----------------------------------- +1 looks good to me. > in specification, put "null" first in unions > -------------------------------------------- > > Key: AVRO-1482 > URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-1482 > Project: Avro > Issue Type: Improvement > Components: doc > Reporter: Doug Cutting > Fix For: 1.7.7 > > Attachments: AVRO-1482.patch > > > Unions with null are a common schema idiom. When a default-value is > specified, it is most often null. Default values for unions must be of the > type of the first element in the union. So normally, when specifying a union > with null, one places the null first so that one can use null as the default > value. Folks often make the mistake of specifying null as the default value > when it is not the first value in the union. Thus the best practice is to > put null as the first element when it is in a union unless you specify a > non-null default value. > Several example schemas in the specification do not put the null first in the > union schema. The specification should set a better example, to help folks > to avoid this potential confusion. It might also mention this issue more > explicitly. -- This message was sent by Atlassian JIRA (v6.2#6252)