Checking for nil in C

[Paul Beckingham <paul@...>]

I am calling a Lua function from C.  That function looks like this:

	function foo ()
	  -- stuff omitted
	  return 1, nil
	end

foo returns two values, an integer and a string (or nil).  In the C code, I want to check to see if the second value is nil or a string.  Here is what I thought I needed:

	// the Lua code above is loaded.

	lua_getglobal (L, "foo");
	lua_pcall (L, 0, 2, 0);

	if (! lua_isnumber (L, -2))
		// foo did not return a number

	if (! lua_isstring (L, -1))
		// foo did not return a string

The nil value is failing the lua_isstring test, presumably because nil is not a string.  How do I check for nil, otherwise a string?

Thanks.
Paul.