If numbers are null

Question

Hi Friends,
We are migrating our forms application from 6i to 10g and we have some issues here.The one is ,if numbers are null we have handled that as mentioned below
IF NVL(l_numb1,' ') = NVL(l_numb2,' ')
THEN
ELSE
END IF;
This works fine in 6i , when migrated to 10g it shows error.
But when both the values are VARCHAR2 then no problem.
So I need to handle this in the entire application.I think the only problem
is substituting space(' ') for NUMBER variables.
Do I have any other alternative for this.
Note : It should work for both VARHCAR2 and NUMBER variables.
Regards
Marlon

Answer 1

I use for this case selfwritten Equal- and NotEqual-Functions.
IF pkg.Equal (Value1, Value2) THEN
END IF;
IF pkg.NotEqual (Value1, Value2) THEN
END IF;
here is the code :
FUNCTION Equal (P_Wert1  IN VARCHAR2,
                 P_Wert2  IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN IS
BEGIN
  IF P_Wert1 = P_Wert2
  OR (P_Wert1 IS NULL AND P_Wert2 IS NULL) THEN
    RETURN (TRUE);
  ELSE
    RETURN (FALSE);
  END IF;
END;or read the full article in my blog:
http://talk2gerd.blogspot.com/2006/12/equal-and-notequal.html