replace-empty-strings-null.md

Replace empty strings with NULLs

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Description

An essential part of cleaning a new data source is deciding how to treat missing values. The CASE statement can help with replacing empty values with something else:

WITH data AS (
  SELECT *
  FROM (VALUES ('a'), ('b'), (''), ('d')) AS data (str)
)

SELECT
  CASE WHEN LENGTH(str) != 0 THEN str END AS str
FROM data;

str
a
b
NULL
d