title: Why does bcp output null when the column contains an empty string and empty string when the column is null?
body: <p>This struck me as really weird behaviour and I spent a while checking for bugs in my code before I found this</p>
  
  <p>"out copies from the database table or view to a file. If you specify an existing file, the file is overwritten. When extracting data, note that the bcp utility represents an empty string as a null and a null string as an empty string." (from <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162802.aspx" rel="noreferrer">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162802.aspx</a>)</p>
  
  <p>Obviously this allowed me to fix my problem but can anybody think of or does anybody know a reason why this is the case? </p>