Re: Empty DN ("") String Value?

[Hallvard B Furuseth <h.b.furuseth@usit.uio.no>]

Michael Ströder writes:
> It really depends on what you want to express. Note that "" represents
> the rootDSE or root naming context. So "" would reference something
> existing or well-defined. IMHO NULL (or None in Python) would better
> signal something undefined or none-existing.

Yes.  There is one case in the LDAP ASN.1 grammar (in rfc 4511) where
you need to distinguish between an absent DN and an empty DN: The LDAPDN
field ModifyDNRequest.newSuperior, which is 'OPTIONAL'.  There may be
others in LDAP extensions defined elsewhere.

OTOH the LDAPDN fields LDAPResult.matchedDN and BindRequest.name are
usually treated as if they meant "absent DN".  In those cases it may
be better to return NULL, and/or treat NULL and "" as equivalent.

(For cases where a DN is not well-defined, I suppose an exception would
be the normal way to handle that in Java.  But I'm not a Java
programmer.)

-- 
Regards,
Hallvard