[HIVE-4485] beeline prints null as empty strings

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 0.13.0
• Component/s: HiveServer2
• Hadoop Flags: Incompatible change

Release Note

This introduces a backward incompatible change.
Earlier, null was getting printed as an empty string. There was no way to distinguish between an empty string an a null value.
With this change null values will be printed as NULL.
To get the old behavior you can set the property nullemptystring to values.
This can be done via commandline argument : beeline --nullemptystring=true
Or within the beeline shell
> !set nullemptystring true

• Assignee: Thejas Nair
• Reporter: Thejas Nair
• Created: 03/May/13 02:59
• Updated: 28/Apr/16 00:52
• Resolved: 27/Nov/13 21:29

Description

beeline is printing nulls as emtpy strings. There was no way to distinguish between an empty string an a null value.
This is inconsistent with hive cli and other databases, they print null as "NULL" string.