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How to avoid nulls with greatest function?

Alessandro RossiSep 11 2009 — edited Jun 4 2013
Hi everybody

I just spot a quite strange behavior on the greatest function: when one of its parameters is null, it returns null.
I also don't think this is what everybody expects from it because there are several cases where this is unacceptable.

This is what happens on a 10.2.0.4 on hpux 11v23 
Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> select greatest(-9999999999,1,99999999999,null)
  2  from dual
  3  /

GREATEST(-9999999999,1,99999999999,NULL)
----------------------------------------


SQL> select greatest('hello','zzzzz','aaaaa','')
  2  from dual
  3  /

G
-


SQL>
Does anybody know to ignore nulls in this cases?

Thanks
Bye Alessandro

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Locked on Jul 2 2013
Added on Sep 11 2009
27 comments
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