>Yes, EVL() is a way to avoid empty values.
I had guessed it would be similar in concept to the NVL() value. I found the idea so useful that I made my own UDF in Visual FoxPro 6 - we hadn't upgraded to VFP 9 yet.
> Do be warned that, unlike IIF(), it evaluates _all_ its parameters. ...
Oh, iif() would not do this? - OK, I see from the help that it doesn't, but I didn't know that. That might be very useful at times.
In the simple case where you just want to substitute a valid value in a SELECT - SQL, that would not be so relevant, but in other cases it would.
I was aware of a similar problem with a few of my UDFs - all parameters would be evaluated BEFORE executing the UDF proper.
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)
