Hugo Kornelis (8/23/2013)
...I've had to work with counters that corresponded to C# zero-based arrays. So "3" represents four elements, and if you combine two of those arrays, you have "7" (representing eight) elements. For that specific use case, it would have been practical if 3 + 3 would evaluate to 7. If someone would redefine addition to work that way, it would save me the effort of having to explicitly write "+1" to my additions. Okay, it may fly in the face of all mathematical theory - but it is SO PRACTICAL (in that specific situation).
Does the request to redefine addition this way sound absurd to you? Well, the request to redefine concatenation of NULL values is exactly like that.
...
Actually, I've been a developer for decades longer than I've been a DBA so zero-based counting does not fly in the face of all mathematical theory nor sound absurd to me. If I add two Hex numbers 7 + 7 = E.
No the mathematical universe did not just implode. It's perfectly correct when one understands the reference is Hex-based.
This is why I'm in complete agreement with the implementation of the new function. Combining "no data present" to any known value(s) = the known value(s) seems perfectly correct.