RESET, NULL and empty-string valued settings and transaction isolation

[Marcelo Zabani <mzabani@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, according to the docs, RESET sets the value of a setting to

"The default value is defined as the value that the parameter would have had, if no SET had ever been issued for it in the current session"

Which confuses me given that the value starts being NULL in the session and then turns into an empty string:

$ psql

=> select current_setting('my.test', true) is null; -- true
=> set my.test = 'abc';
=> reset my.test;
=> select current_setting('my.test', true) is null; -- false
=> select current_setting('my.test', true)=''; -- true

A similar effect happens with transactions and SET LOCAL:

=> begin;
=*> set local my.test='abc';
=*> rollback; -- commit works too
=> select current_setting('my.test', true) = ''; -- true

Is this expected? I thought even if I misunderstand the docs, the effect isn't very nice because SQL like current_setting('my.some_boolean_setting')::boolean will fail after a transaction with SET LOCAL sets it, a side-effect that can be particularly confusing and basically requires usage of nullif(.., '') or other explicit checks around every current_setting call-site in practice.

Thanks in advance,

Marcelo.