I'm really just currious as to WHAT you would want to see as opposed to NULL?
How could you have a field that has no value? What would it mean? NULL is the answer to this. It is recording the absence of something. So, I would say that this is an expected behaviour of any database engine. For example, a price field might have 3 distinct values. First value is >0. This says that there is a price, and what it is. Second value is 0. This might say that it is a 'free' item. The third value is NULL. This would say that there is no price. For data collection, 0 would mean that it was measured, but the value was 0. There might be 0" of rain fall in a day. A NULL in this case would say that while the field is there, either measurements were not done, or there was a 'problem' with the reporting device, or it has not reported yet. Ah, and remember that NULL and "NULL" are different. On 15 Jan 2003 at 18:48, Benjamin Pflugmann wrote: > Hello. > > On Tue 2003-01-14 at 09:32:02 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I'm aware that NULL and "" are not the same thing.. I would like to > > prevent the column from accepting values automatically ( with out the > > presence of a DEFAULT). > [...] > > The problem is: You have a DEFAULT, you just don't know it. ;-) > > Do a SHOW CREATE TABLE stuff, and you'll see what I mean. That is a > known deficiency, as Eric told you: > > It's a known behaviour and is described in the MySQL manual: > > http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Bugs.html > > You can change it if you compile MySQL server with > -DDONT_USE_DEFAULT_FIELDS option. But in this case you can't use > default values at all. > > http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/configure_options.html describes > -DDONT_USE_DEFAULT_FIELDS. > > HTH, > > Benjamin. > > -- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --Opus-- There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence. - Henry Adams -------------------------------------------------------- Get added to my Humor list: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=ADD_HUMOR Get added to my Neat list: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=ADD_NEAT Get my PGP public key: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=PSEND&body=send%20PublicKEY.asc Visit My Home Page: http://value.net/~opus/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
