MySQL INET_ATON error during update, message is “Incorrect string value”

Question

MySQL is 5.7.23.

IFNULL(INET_ATON(\'\'),0) returns a 0 in a plain select, but ERRORS during update ... set assignment

Q: Is there a

Answer 1

Thanks for the insight Bill.

Turns out there are only a dozen places in the app where INET_ATON is used, so I'm going to push admin to let me change those to APP_INET_ATON which will only call system INET_ATON when the IP_STRING is 'legitimate'.

DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS APP_INET_ATON;
CREATE FUNCTION APP_INET_ATON(IP_STRING VARCHAR(50)) RETURNS bigint DETERMINISTIC
  RETURN 
    CASE 
      WHEN IP_STRING IS NULL THEN 0
      WHEN IP_STRING NOT REGEXP '^[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}$' THEN 0
      ELSE INET_ATON (IP_STRING)
    END;

Figuring out where the 'bad' IP_STRING values are coming from is for another day.