Below are two options for returning rows that only contain non-alphanumeric characters in PostgreSQL.
Non-alphanumeric characters include punctuation characters like !@#&()–[{}]:;',?/* and symbols like `~$^+=<>“, as well as whitespace characters like the space or tab characters.
MySQL has an IFNULL() function that allows us to easily replace NULL values with another value.
Most major DBMSs provide us with a function for replacing null values with another value.
But the name of the function tends to differ across DBMSs. For example, SQL Server has an ISNULL() function, while others (such as MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite) have an IFNULL() function for doing the same thing.
However, to confuse matters, MySQL and MariaDB each have an ISNULL() function that works differently to SQL Server’s function of the same name (MySQL and MariaDB’s implementation only accept a single argument, and return 1 if its null and 0 if it’s not).
In MySQL, the ISNULL() function enables us to check whether a value is null or not. If it’s null, then 1 is returned, otherwise 0 is returned.
The following SQLite examples return only those rows that have non-numeric values in a given column.
We can use the - operator to subtract one or more weeks from a date in PostgreSQL.
In MariaDB, the IFNULL() function allows us to replace NULL values with another value.
MySQL has an IF() function that provides a convenient way to perform a simple “IF/ELSE” operation.
It works similar to a basic IF/ELSE statement, in that it allows us to check for a condition, and return a different result depending on whether it’s true or not.
More specifically, if the first argument to the IF() function is true, the second argument is returned. If it’s not true, the third argument is returned.