From: Peter Hickman <peter@...>
Date: 2005-02-22T23:19:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Proposal for nil, 0, and "" in an if statement

Gavin Kistner wrote:

> I don't have actual code, but imagine looping through records returned 
> with financial data, and you want to print out a "-" if the field is 
> missing -or- zero. The whole "this field doesn't have any meaningful 
> information that contributes to the sum of the column" spreadsheet thing.
>
Might this not cause trouble with databases. A database record (returned
as a structure or object) would have NULL == nil for fields with no
value which is not the same as a field with a definite value such as 0.