In the code that converts IN predicates to EXISTS predicates it is changing
the select list elements to constant 1. Example :
SELECT ... FROM ...  WHERE a IN (SELECT c FROM ...)
is transformed to :
SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM ...  HAVING a = c)
However there can be no FROM clause in the IN subquery and it may not be
a simple select : SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE a IN (SELECT f(..) AS
c UNION SELECT ...) This query is transformed to : SELECT ... FROM ...
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM (SELECT f(..) AS c UNION SELECT ...)
x HAVING a = c) In the above query c in the HAVING clause is made to be
an Item_null_helper (a subclass of Item_ref) pointing to the real
Item_field (which is not referenced anywhere else in the query anymore).
This is done because Item_ref_null_helper collects information whether
there are NULL values in the result.  This is OK for directly executed
statements, because the Item_field pointed by the Item_null_helper is
already fixed when the transformation is done.  But when executed as
a prepared statement all the Item instances are "un-fixed" before the
recompilation of the prepared statement. So when the Item_null_helper
gets fixed it discovers that the Item_field it points to is not fixed
and issues an error.  The remedy is to keep the original select list
references when there are no tables in the FROM clause. So the above
becomes : SELECT ... FROM ...  WHERE EXISTS (SELECT c FROM (SELECT f(..)
AS c UNION SELECT ...) x HAVING a = c) In this way c is referenced
directly in the select list as well as by reference in the HAVING
clause. So it gets correctly fixed even with prepared statements.  And
since the Item_null_helper subclass of Item_ref_null_helper is not used
anywhere else it's taken out.