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Expressions Returning NULL

Expressions in this list will always return NULL:

1 + 2 + 3 + NULL
'Home ' || 'sweet ' || NULL
MyField = NULL
MyField <> NULL
NULL = NULL
not (NULL)

If it seems difficult to understand why, remember that NULL is a state that stands for “unknown”.

NULL in Logical Expressions

It has already been shown that NOT (NULL) results in NULL.The interaction is a bit more complicated for the logical AND and logical OR operators:

NULL or false  → NULL
NULL or true   → true
NULL or NULL   → NULL
NULL and false → false
NULL and true  → NULL
NULL and NULL  → NULL
Tip

As a basic rule-of-thumb, if substituting TRUE for NULL produces a different result than substituting FALSE, the outcome of the original expression is unknown, or NULL.

Examples
(1 = NULL) or (1 <> 1)    -- returns NULL
(1 = NULL) or FALSE       -- returns NULL
(1 = NULL) or (1 = 1)     -- returns TRUE
(1 = NULL) or TRUE        -- returns TRUE
(1 = NULL) or (1 = NULL)  -- returns NULL
(1 = NULL) or UNKNOWN     -- returns NULL
(1 = NULL) and (1 <> 1)   -- returns FALSE
(1 = NULL) and FALSE      -- returns FALSE
(1 = NULL) and (1 = 1)    -- returns NULL
(1 = NULL) and TRUE       -- returns NULL
(1 = NULL) and (1 = NULL) -- returns NULL
(1 = NULL) and UNKNOWN    -- returns NULL