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up vote 2 down vote favorite

This works, but nvl AND case seem redundant. Basically, if null then 'N' else 'Y.

CHICKEN_HATCH_DATE is a DATE data type.

  select  stricken_chicken_id,
          case nvl(to_char(chicken_hatch_date),'N') 
          when 'N' then 'N'
          else 'Y'
          end chicken_hatch_date              
   from   stricken_chicken;
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I'm not sure what's wrong with your code, but if you don't like all of those 'N''s would 

  select  stricken_chicken_id,
          case when to_char(chicken_hatch_date) is null then
             'N'
          else
             'Y'
          end chicken_hatch_date              
   from   stricken_chicken;

work for you?

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I tweaked this slightly.. yielding select id, case when hatch_date is null then 'N' else 'Y' end .... There is no need to perform any operation on hatch_date. – zundarz Jun 26 '12 at 1:34
up vote 3 down vote

If your aim is to print N for a null date why not check that directly?

SELECT
    stricken_chicken_id,
    CASE chicken_hatch_date
        WHEN NULL THEN
            'N'
        ELSE
            'Y'
    END AS "chicken_hatch_date"           
FROM
    stricken_chicken;
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up vote 1 down vote

I think that better approach is to use "decode" instead of "case" in this example:

select stricken_chicken_id
      ,decode(chicken_hatch_date, null, 'N', 'Y') chicken_hatch_date
  from stricken_chicken;
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