TITLE

Add null() keyword and fundamental data type

VERSION

  Maintainer: Nathan Wiger <nate@wiger.org>
  Date: 19 Sep 2000
  Last Modified: 23 Sep 2000
  Mailing List: perl6-language@perl.org
  Number: 263
  Version: 2
  Status: Retracted

ABSTRACT

Currently, Perl has the concept of undef, which means that a value is not defined. One thing it lacks, however, is the concept of null, which means that a value is known to be unknown or not applicable. These are two separate concepts.

The absence of a null concept and keyword in Perl makes it more difficult to interface with relational databases and other medium which utilize null. Modules such as DBI must map null to undef, which is an imperfect match.

This RFC proposes a new null keyword and fundamental value for Perl 6.

NOTES ON RETRACTION

This was basically universally acknowledged as the Wrong Way to implement the idea. For more details, see the mail thread starting here:

www.mail-archive.com

The alternative approach of a use tristate pragma was determined to be much more suitable and Perlish.

DESCRIPTION

What is NULL anyways?

The concept of null as opposed to undef is sometimes difficult for people to understand. Here is Glenn Linderman's great explanation, directly from an email he posted to the list:

<quote> There is a difference between "undefined" and "unknown".

SQL NULL, and the resultant tristate operators used in SQL, specifically is based on NULL representing the "unknown" value.

Perl undefined is a different concept--that of an uninitialized variable. This is proven from its earliest versions where the value is coerced to 0 or '' (specific values) when used (without warnings on).

Some Perl programs & modules (including DBI) attempt to correlate NULL and undefined, for lack of a better match of concepts (Perl is missing the concept of NULL, SQL is missing the concept of undefined, but that doesn't correctly imply that the concepts each language _does_ have are correlated, or should be).

If you want NULL, RFC it is a new concept. DBI could then be ported to Perl 6, and the power of using NULL in its operators (perhaps together with transactional variables) could make Perl an extremely powerful database manipulation language and would make the language, complementary to and augmenting SQL in ways no other language currently does.

Any OO language with full operator overloading could write objects/operators that behave like SQL values, and implement tristate logic for those objects, just like SQL does. Perhaps you should attempt that, and RFC the failures. I would recommend, however, that you not attempt to use the concept of undefined to implement the concept of NULL, at least not visibly. </quote>

Why the heck do we care?

As mentioned above, null and <undef> are two different things altogether. Consider the following two examples:

   undef                     null
   ------------------------  ------------------------
   $a = undef;               $a = null;
   $b = 1;                   $b = 1;
   $c = $a + b;              $c = $a + $b;

   $c is 1                   $c is null

The keyword null means that a value is known to be unknown. This means a couple important things, with semantics far different from undef:

   1. Any math or string operation between a null and
      non-null value results in null

   2. No null value is equal to any other null, unlike
      undef

   3. A null value is neither defined nor undefined

To recap: There is no 1:1 mapping between undef and <null>. Any attempt to do so is inaccurate. For more details, please read the references.

The new 'null' keyword

The new null keyword can be used anywhere that undef can be:

   my $name = null;
   null @array;
   @return = query($amount, $country, null, $time);
   die "Fatal, \$name was unset!" if ( $name == null );

With semantics to represent the RDBMS concept of null. Note that the last one works because we are simply testing against null. However, the following code:

   $a = null;
   $b = null;
   print '$a eq $b!' if ($a eq $b);

Would not print anything, since two null values are not equivalent.

The 'initialize' pragma

The initialize pragma is introduced to tell Perl what to default your unitialized values to. By default, it will remain undef, same as currently. However, this code:

   use initialize 'null';   # or "use initialize 'undef'"

   my($a, $b);
   print "Hello world!" if ($a == $b);

Would no longer print out "Hello World!", since the unitialized values $a and $b would now be set to null, rather than undef. This allows very easy porting of RDBMS-related work. The use initialize pragma should obey blocks as well:

   use initialize 'null';
   my($a, $b);
   print "Hello world!" if ($a == $b);
   {
       use initialize 'undef';
       my($c, $d);
       print "Hello universe!" if ($c == $d);

   }

The above example would print out "Hello universe!". By obeying blocks, you can easily embed true SQL queries in your code without disrupting the rest of the script.

IMPLEMENTATION

Add a null keyword and fundamental value that have the proper semantics.

Add an initialize pragma that tells Perl what to initialize variables to by default.

MIGRATION

None. New functionality.

This file is part of the Perl 6 Archive