Oracle PL/SQL string compare issue

Question

I have the following Oracle PL/SQL codes that may be rusty from you guys perspective:

 DECLARE
 str1  varchar2(4000);
 str2  varchar2(4000);
 BEGIN
   str1:         


        

Answer 1

To fix the core question, "how should I detect that these two variables don't have the same value when one of them is null?", I don't like the approach of nvl(my_column, 'some value that will never, ever, ever appear in the data and I can be absolutely sure of that') because you can't always guarantee that a value won't appear... especially with NUMBERs.

I have used the following:

if (str1 is null) <> (str2 is null) or str1 <> str2 then
  dbms_output.put_line('not equal');
end if;

Disclaimer: I am not an Oracle wizard and I came up with this one myself and have not seen it elsewhere, so there may be some subtle reason why it's a bad idea. But it does avoid the trap mentioned by APC, that comparing a null to something else gives neither TRUE nor FALSE but NULL. Because the clauses (str1 is null) will always return TRUE or FALSE, never null.

(Note that PL/SQL performs short-circuit evaluation, as noted here.)