Hi Folks,
I have a tab-delimited text file. Here is one row of the file:
A B C
foo bar
The value in field B is optional. In this particular row there is no value for B so it is empty.
I could represent the text file in XML by creating an element for each field and then putting a wrapper element around the elements. For an empty field I could represent that by omitting the
element. So here is one way to represent the row:
<Row>
<A>foo</A>
<C>bar</C>
</Row>
Notice that I omitted the <B> element because the B field is empty.
Alternatively, I could represent an empty field with an empty element:
<Row>
<A>foo</A>
<B/>
<C>bar</C>
</Row>
Notice the empty <B> element.
What other ways are there for representing the row? I am particularly interested in seeing other ways that people represent empty fields. (There are probably an infinite number of ways that
the row could be represented. I am interested in the ways that the row is
commonly represented.)
/Roger
