Thursday, April 5, 2012

SQL SERVER – LEN Vs DATALENGTH of NULL

Simple but interesting – In recent survey I found that many developers making this generic mistake. I have seen following code in periodic code review. (The code below is not actual code, it is simple sample code)
DECLARE @MyVar VARCHAR(10)
SET @MyVar = NULL
IF (LEN(@MyVar) = 0)


I decided to send following code to them. After running the following sample code it was clear that LEN of NULL values is not 0 (Zero) but it is NULL. Similarly, the result for DATALENGTH function is the same. DATALENGTH of NULL is NULL.

Sample Test Version:
DECLARE @MyVar VARCHAR(10)
SET @MyVar = NULL
IF (LEN(@MyVar) = 0)
PRINT 'LEN of NULL is 0'
ELSE
PRINT
'LEN of NULL is NULL'

Result Set:
LEN of NULL is NULL

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