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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T09:14:41+00:00

I have a PHP/MySQL application that stores blank values in some cases as ”

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I have a PHP/MySQL application that stores “blank” values in some cases as '' (empty strings) and in other cases as NULLs.

Having this mixed format certainly causes a problem when comparing, so I’m wondering which one is the better storage mechanism? '' or NULL?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    While this is confusing, actually you should store null for a number of reasons :

    1. Checking against null is usually faster than checking an empty string in most databases
    2. Null commonly means “i don’t know”, empty string means “I know : it’s empty”. It gives you better semantics.
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