Empty String is interpreted as NULL

Hello all,
Suppose I have this table

SQL> DESC FRUIT

 Name                                      Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------- -------- 
 ORANGE                                    NOT NULL VARCHAR2(10)
 APPLE                                     NOT NULL VARCHAR2(10)

If I do this insert:

SQL> /
INSERT INTO FRUIT VALUES ('hello', '')
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01400: cannot insert NULL into ("LIGHTCONE"."FRUIT"."APPLE")

I got an error cannot insert NULL. But, what if I meant is to insert empty string '' ? Certainly empty string is NOT equal to NULL values.

So how do I get around this?

Thanks in advance for any help. Received on Fri Jul 18 2003 - 14:22:11 CDT