Question

My database contains empty table columns.
I would like to add a character like § to these empty rows so that I can search for them easier. How would I go about?

I already have a script that lets me replace or remove characters but I dont know a way to specify that rows that are empty should be updated with a character.

Answer 1

First, you probably don’t have empty rows but empty column values in the rows. Wouldn’t it be better if you just do it like if (!empty($row['column'])) instead of trying to put some bogus character?

Or if you want to do a SELECT just do something like this:

SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE column_name > ''; // seems to work for both NULL and empty string

Or:

DELETE FROM table_name WHERE column_name IS NULL or column_name = '';