Nulls Last, Nulls First

Postgres query sorting has a great feature,nulls first/nulls last, that helps us specify where in a query result null values appear.

Nulls in Postgres are sorted as larger than any other value, so this is a descending sort containing null values (💀 == null):

example=# select * from users order by full_name desc;
  full_name
--------------
 💀
 💀
 💀
 Tracy Jordan
 Liz Lemon
 Jack Donaghy

Reverse the null position with nulls last:

 example=# select * from users order by full_name desc nulls last;
  full_name
--------------
 Tracy Jordan
 Liz Lemon
 Jack Donaghy
 💀
 💀
 💀
(6 rows)

Here's the opposite query, ascending:

example=# select * from users order by full_name asc;
  full_name
--------------
 Jack Donaghy
 Liz Lemon
 Tracy Jordan
 💀
 💀
 💀
(6 rows)

Now, reverse the null position with nulls first:

example=# select * from users order by full_name asc nulls first;
  full_name
--------------
 💀
 💀
 💀
 Jack Donaghy
 Liz Lemon
 Tracy Jordan
(6 rows)

Lots of ways to explore our data.

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Nulls Last, Nulls First