Re: Blank vs. space (not null) from a database

[<neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

Within a database a field must either have a value or be null. (The use or avoidance of nulls is a religious issue, the Name of Codd being occasionally invoked in the ensuing arguments.) A non-null field has a default value. If the field is a string, the default value could easily be a single blank or space, or even a string of several of them. A numeric field might have a default of zero.

Whether the term "space" or "blank" ought to be used likely depends on the heritage of the system and its users. IBM's term, historically, has been blank (the EBCDIC blank character), but the rest of the planet has used the term space, referring to the ASCII space character.

Personally I would use the term blank but initially introduce it as "the blank (space) character" unless the audience had a known preference.
 
Jill Thompson-Weintraub asks:
> When referring to the empty contents of a field extracted from a database (the field is not a null), is it preferable to write, "... when the contents of some_field is blank, [the whatever will do something]", or "... when the contents of some_field is a space, [the whatever will do something]". 


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