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You are correct, to a point. I had CHAR in mind,
instead of VARCHAR2. Thanks for pointing that out.
But Note:1011340.6 on Metalink does state that the the
behavior of zero-length strings and NULLS changed by
Oracle 7.1.3 all the way through Oracle 8.1.7. And if
you do some further digging, how Oracle handles
zero-length strings really only applies to inserting
the data. Try issuing the following queries (I tested
this in Oracle 8, 8i, and 9i):
SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE column_name IS NULL;
SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE column_name='';
They will return two different results! So not all
handling of zero length strings is the same. I recall
reading somewhere along the line that Oracle Corp. was
going to change this behavior in 9i. Apparently, my
information was in error. Thanks for pointing it out!
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