Re: Empty? No. Array? No. Has? Yes.

[Luis Carvalho <lexcarvalho@...>]

>    Interesting* NaN would actually work as a potential 'empty' then for my
>    intended use, particularly as they can tunnel through the C layer also
>    (though detecting them in a portable way is something I'd have to check up
>    on carefully).

So you don't have NaNs in SQL? If you do, how would you distinguish between
"empty" NaN and "empty" NULL when you serialize?

If you want more food for thought, check R's treatment of NA ("not available",
a value that codes for missing entries) and NULL. Here's a good discussion:

http://www.r-bloggers.com/r-na-vs-null/

Personally, I think it's even harder on newbies...

Cheers,
Luis

-- 
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
                -- Pablo Picasso

-- 
Luis Carvalho (Kozure)
lua -e 'print((("lexcarvalho@NO.gmail.SPAM.com"):gsub("(%u+%.)","")))'