ListLen Null Entries 1

[DeZiner]

I have set: <cfset MyList = &quot;,,,,,&quot;>

Then use: listlen(MyList, &quot;,&quot

this returns 0 where as I need it to return 5.

Is there another function I should be using. Ultimately I will be using listgetat to retrive items and populate the DB. Some items may be null and that's ok. By problem is if I listgetat(MyList, 3) I get an error.

Thanks!


DeZiner
Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that amateurs built the Ark.
Professionals built the Titanic

 

[csteinhilber]

Yep... that's a &quot;feature&quot; of ColdFusion's list functions... it ignores null elements. It's fully documented in the docs for ListLen(), etc:

Note

ColdFusion ignores empty list elements; thus, a list that is defined as "a,b,c,,,d" is treated as a four element list.

It's pretty annoying, isn't it. I've had one or two situations where it came in handy, but most of the time it's not what I want to have happen.


The only way around it is to make sure that the &quot;null&quot; values aren't really null. Luckily, a simple space will do it. And luckily, you can simply use Replace() to do what you need.

<CFSET lstMyList = &quot;,,,,,&quot;>

<CFSET lstFixedList = Replace(lstMyList, &quot;,,&quot;, &quot;, ,&quot;, &quot;ALL&quot;)>

<CFOUTPUT>#ListLen(&quot;#lstFixedList#&quot;, &quot;,&quot;)#</CFOUTPUT>

-Carl

 

[csteinhilber]

Then you can use

Trim()

to make the list element null again:

<CFLOOP list=&quot;#lstFixedList#&quot; index=&quot;whichElement&quot;>
    <CFOUTPUT>#Trim(whichElement)#<br /></CFOUTPUT>
</CFLOOP>

-Carl

 

[DeZiner]

csteinhilber,

Thanks a lot!!!!!

I keep a website handy of CFML functions and it said nothing about the null values, so I was stumped. This is perfect though!

DeZiner
Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that amateurs built the Ark.
Professionals built the Titanic