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postgresqlpostgresql-9.4pgadmin

How to differenciate (and format) "empty" text fields

Recently end users have started to notice explicit simple quotes couples ('') on empty fields. I have no idea what would have caused that, and was not yet in my company at the time it began to appear. By looking in the database, I saw a lot of text values filled ''...

simple quote couples can be accessed in the db

...as well as others just kept empty, in the same columns:

dimple quote couples and really empty fields in the same column

I tried to access by query to these values (by trying several syntax)...

SELECT query

...but found no result(with each one of them):

empty result set

These fields are not null but I cannot seem to access them, and it is quite a big deal if I want to up date them to an empty value (an actual '').

My main goal is to get rid of all the '' appearances to end up having only wether fields filled by users or empty ones. My side goal is to understand better how this happened and how to prevent it in the first place.

Solution

  • In fact they are empty strings and you can find them with this query:

    select * 
from segments
where se_comments = '';

    The second image in the question shows three empty strings, three nulls and two empty strings.