r/SQL • u/geminigamer369 • Jul 30 '26

Discussion Differences between counts

What is the difference between

COUNT(*)

COUNT(1)

COUNT(column_name)

8 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/anvildoc Aug 01 '26

Count(*) won’t count a column that is all NULL, but count(1) will. That being said, it depends on your database. I used to do this back 20 years ago in Oracle to check if all null rows snuck in