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To: "Sean Chittenden" <sean@chittenden.org>, <internals@lists.php.net>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 12:38:06 -0600
Message-ID: <EOEIIEMPJGBOGHFJBKAFOEGLCBAA.michaels@crye-leike.com>
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Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] PostgreSQL driver handles boolean values incorrectly...
From: michaels@crye-leike.com ("Michael Sims")
References: <30EB6453-305B-11D9-80C2-000A95C705DC@chittenden.org>

Sean Chittenden wrote:
> A boolean value is returned as the strings 't' and 'f', not the
> constants true and false.  This presents all kinds of interesting
> oddities for code that does something like:
[...]

You're probably already aware of this, but you can use a bit(1) field as a
boolean and this will map to PHP values that will allow you to check for
truth in conditionals.  Personally I do that instead of using Postgres's
boolean since other database systems I've worked with don't have a boolean
type, but they all have a bit type.  Although I agree that it would be nice
for PHP to map pg's boolean to PHP's boolean...

> The same problem lies with the NULL value, which IMHO, should be
> mapped to the constant NULL, not the string 'NULL'.

I was unable to reproduce this.  The following code:

$r = pg_query($dbh, "create table test (field1 varchar(10))");
$r = pg_query($dbh, "insert into test values (NULL)");
$r = pg_query($dbh, "select field1 from test");

$row = pg_fetch_row($r);
var_dump($row);

$r = pg_query($dbh, "drop table test");

outputs:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  NULL
}

On PHP 4.3.9, Postgresql 7.4.5, running on Linux (Debian Sarge).  If you get
different results perhaps you've uncovered a bug that should be reported...