Re: Order By

   From: "Babich, Alan" <ABabich@filenet.com>
   
   A null string is similar to a zero length string since
   neither contains any characters, so it seems odd to me 
   to put null strings and zero length strings at opposite ends 
   of the sort. I would think doing that could confuse some end users 
   who are not sophisticated in the subtleties of zero length 
   Strings Versus Null Strings. It also forces the implementation 
   to split the semantic hair of whether zero length strings are 
   null or not. ...

You still need to split that hair, methinks.  _If_ it is indeed
possible for an implementation to return both zero length and null
strings (is it possible???) then the sort order must specify which
sorts first.

Received on Thursday, 8 June 2000 22:12:50 UTC