Re: RFC 263 (v1) Add null() keyword and fundamental data type

[Tom Christiansen]

>* Tom Christiansen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [21 Sep 2000 05:49]:
>> >     no strict;
>> >     $a = undef;
>> >     $b = null;

>> Perl already has a null string: "".

>Looks more like a string of no length than a null string.

Well, it's not.  That's a null string.  You're thinking of "\0", 
a true value in Perl.

Here are the canonical definitions:

    NULL STRING:
        A string containing no characters, not to be confused with
        a string containing a null character, which has a positive
        length.

    NULL CHARACTER:
        A character with the ASCII value of zero.  It's used by C
        and some Unix syscalls to terminate strings, but Perl allows
        strings to contain a null.

    NULL LIST:
        A list value with zero elements, represented in Perl by ().

--tom