postgres replace isnull with integer

Question

I am trying to replace empty cells in a column (type int) with an integer.

I am using Postgres. I have been able to replace them in a 'select' query using coalesce, but not sure how to alter the records permanently.

Answer 1

You could use an update statement:

UPDATE my_table
SET    my_int_column = 0
WHERE  my_int_column IS NULL

Answer 2

This does not answer your question. However, this does the opposite. So, in case someone is looking up for replacing a value with NULL in select query result and reached this post, use the nullif function:

select last_name||', '||first_name as "Name", nullif(salary, 0) as "Salary" from employee;

Here, it will return all records including records where salary is zero, but will show empty cells in place of zero.