Christoph Haller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > [ '' is less than 'GDMF' ]
> Are these results standard compliant? I doubt that the SQL standard really says anything on the subject, but ISTM any rational string-sorting algorithm would put '' before anything else. > It's just because I have a DBMS here, where the results are vice versa. Let me guess ... it's Oracle? Last I heard Oracle had a problem distinguishing empty strings from NULLs. If it sorts NULLs at the end then it wouldn't be surprising for empty strings to come out at the end in an ORDER BY sort. However, I'm not sure that explains the exact example you cite of boolean comparison results. If it were taking the '' as a NULL then both comparisons ought to return NULL. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend