Is there better Oracle operator to do null-safe equality check?

Question

According to this question, the way to perform an equality check in Oracle, and I want null to be considered equal null is something like

SELECT  COUNT(1)
           


        

Answer 1

As an alternative you can use NVL function and designated literal which will be returned if a value is null:

-- both are not nulls
SQL> with t1(col1, col2) as(
  2    select 123, 123 from dual
  3  )
  4  select 1 res
  5    from t1
  6  where nvl(col1, -1) = nvl(col2, -1)
  7  ;

       RES
----------
         1

-- one of the values is null
SQL> with t1(col1, col2) as(
  2    select null, 123 from dual
  3  )
  4  select 1 res
  5    from t1
  6  where nvl(col1, -1) = nvl(col2, -1)
  7  ;

  no rows selected

 -- both values are nulls
 SQL> with t1(col1, col2) as(
  2    select null, null from dual
  3  )
  4  select 1 res
  5    from t1
  6  where nvl(col1, -1) = nvl(col2, -1)
  7  ;

       RES
----------
         1

---

As @Codo has noted in the comment, of course, above approach requires choosing a literal comparing columns will never have. If comparing columns are of number datatype(for example) and are able to accept any value, then choosing -1 of course won't be an option. To eliminate that restriction we can use decode function(for numeric or character datatypes) for that:

 with t1(col1, col2) as(
  2    select null, null from dual
  3  )
  4  select 1 res
  5    from t1
  6  where decode(col1, col2, 'same', 'different') = 'same'
  7  ;

       RES
----------
         1