arrays: if(null == [ ])

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 09:18:38 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> but I still think we should discourage using null as a
> sentinel, it leads to confusing code.

If null were actually properly differentiated from empty, then this wouldn't be 
a problem, but it's not. It _should_ be possible to treat null as a sentinel. 
The fact that it causes issues is a major flaw in the language IMHO. But given 
that flaw, it does very quickly become error-prone to use null as a sentinel. 
In general, I'd say that the only reasonable place to do so is when returning 
an array (and especially a string) from a function. The return value can then 
be immeditely checked with is null before it has the chance to have something 
happen to it which could cause it to be empty but non-null.

- Jonathan M Davis