A.2. A Note on Equality
☝
Important
This note about equality and inequality operators applies everywhere in Firebird’s SQL language.
The
operator, which is explicitly used in many conditions, only matches values to values.
According to the SQL standard, =
NULL
is not a value and hence two NULL
s are neither equal nor unequal to one another.
If you need NULL
s to match each other in a condition, use the IS NOT DISTINCT FROM
operator.
This operator returns true if the operands have the same value or if they are both NULL
.
|select *
|from A join B
|on A.id is not distinct from B.code
Likewise, in cases where you want to test against NULL
for a condition of inequality, use IS DISTINCT FROM
, not
.
If you want <>
NULL
to be considered different from any value and two NULL
s to be considered equal:
|select *
|from A join B
|on A.id is distinct from B.code