Request for Comments: Filter behavior on undefined values

[Ondrej Zajicek]

On Tue, Jan 09, 2018 at 06:42:23PM +0100, Martin Mares wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> > Variants we thought about when an undefined attribute is to be read:
> > 
> > 1  the filter fails with an error.
> > 2  the value is set to default (zero or whatever) and then used
> > 3  it is propagated as undefined until any comparison/match happens,
> >    then the comparison/match is always false
> 
> In the Sherlock Holmes search engine, we used a different solution,
> which could be applicable to BIRD filters, too.
> 
> We added an undefined value to all types, including the boolean type.
> This leads to trivial tri-state logic, which can be modelled in this way:
> 1=true, -1=false, 0=undefined; AND is MIN, OR is MAX. Arithmetic operators
> with at least one undefined input yield undefined output. Relational
> operators with at least one undefined input yield an undefined boolean.
> Functions can handle undefined values as they wish.

Hello

Thanks for suggestion, this seems like an elegant solution. Assuming NOT
is NEG and conditionals fail for non-true. Note that this is not Boolean
algebra (as law of excluded middle is not satisfied), but De Morgan
algebra, so perhaps we could also rename boolean datatype to de_morgan
datatype ;-) .

-- 
Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo

Ondrej 'Santiago' Zajicek (email: santiago at crfreenet.org)
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"To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so."