Hello,

The other day i posted a rather lengthy message about a (self-induced)
bug because i did not initialize a variable properly. The conclusion i
get from the response to that post is that these are 'normal' constructs
in firebird's stored procedure language :

...
total = 0;
select sum(...) form other_table into :total;
...

Again, if i understood Ms Helen Borrie's message correctly, if the
select returns NULL, the variable total will not be affected, so it will
be still be zero.

Today (at 5 AM, duh), i encountered another case with these lines :
...
total = 0;
select sum(detail.amount)
from master
join detail on (master_id = detail_id
where (master.trans_date < :end_date) and
(detail.item_id = :item_id)
into :total;
...

Since the tables are empty, the result of the variable TOTAL is always
NULL inside this stored procedure (Firebird 1.5.3, Win32). This kinda
contradicts my conclusion above (about how a SELECT INTO that returns a
NULL will not affect the variable value).

Just thought i'm gonna post this here before i went to bed :)
Thank you all in advance,
t.s.