question Display blank space for a column as NULL in the HIVE table data in Support Questions

Display blank space for a column as NULL in the HIVE table data

BIDEV3421 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:18 GMT

I am trying to display a column in HIVE as 'NULL' whenever the source data has a blank space. I tried using the SET TBLPROPERTIES ('serialization.null.format'='\\N') and SET TBLPROPERTIES ('serialization.null.format'='') which did not work. Does anyone know how to resolve this?

Re: Display blank space for a column as NULL in the HIVE table data

araujo — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 09:39:26 GMT

@BIDEV3421

This property is for the opposite of what you want. The value of this property is what hive shows when the source day has a null value.

I don't think there's a property to do what you want, but you can use an expression like the following in your select:

case when mycol = ' ' then NULL else mycol end

Cheers

Andre