MySQL Comparing NULL values returns empty set

It has been a little while since I touched some MySQL. Long enough that I forgot about an issue with how MySQL treats NULL values.  What's the issue? You cannot use the typical SQL comparison operators when testing for a NULL value.  It even says so in the MySQL documentation:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/problems-with-null.html

It states two facts:
  * "In SQL, the NULL value is never true in comparison to any other value, even NULL."
 * "To look for NULL values, you must use the IS NULL test." 


In other words, MySql provides special operators when dealing with NULL values.  So if you were trying to perform a simple query like this:

SELECT id FROM users WHERE email = NULL

you would not get a syntax error. Instead, you just get an empty result returned by the query. Thanks, MySQL. (I sadly spent a good couple of hours tracking this exact problem).  Instead, performing the query like this:

SELECT id FROM users WHERE email IS NULL

will yield the expected results.  There is also IS NOT NULL, and a function IFNULL() to aid in your NULL comparisons.  The documentation is a pretty good read, as mysql handles null quite differently then other languages.

Hopefully this will help save some innocent keyboards being destroyed out of frustration!