MySql Query Replace NULL with Empty String in Select

Question

How do you replace a NULL value in the select with an empty string? It doesnt look very professional to output \"NULL\" values.

This is very unusual and based on my synt

Answer 1

SELECT COALESCE(prereq, '') FROM test

Coalesce will return the first non-null argument passed to it from left to right. If all arguemnts are null, it'll return null, but we're forcing an empty string there, so no null values will be returned.

Also note that the COALESCE operator is supported in standard SQL. This is not the case of IFNULL. So it is a good practice to get use the former. Additionally, bear in mind that COALESCE supports more than 2 parameters and it will iterate over them until a non-null coincidence is found.