INF: Assignment of Empty Results Set Does Not Set Variable

ID: Q107561


The information in this article applies to:


SUMMARY

If a local variable is set by the results of a SELECT statement which returns no rows, the value currently stored in the local variable will remain unchanged.


MORE INFORMATION

An example of this behavior would be the following statement:


   declare @var int
   select @var = 5
   select @var = dbid from sysdatabases where name = "does not exist"
   select @var 

The above query will return 5 as the results of the final SELECT statement. However, if a local variable is set by a query which explicitly returns NULL, the value of the local variable will be set to NULL.

Additional query words: 4.20 Transact-SQL


Keywords          : kbother SSrvTrans 
Version           : 4.2
Platform          : OS/2 WINDOWS 
Issue type        : 

Last Reviewed: March 18, 1999