On Fri, 22 Mar 2002, Yuchen Zhang wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have a question about empty optional field.
>
> It seems that there is no way to indicate one possibility in the OSS C
> encodings. That case occurs when a SEQUENCE has an OPTIONAL field, and the
> type of that OPTIONAL field is a SEQUENCE OF. It does not seem possible to
> distinguish between:
>
> 1) The field is present but the SEQUENCE OF is empty.
> 2) The field is not present.
>
> The problem comes from:
>
> A) An empty SEQUENCE OF is represented as a NULL pointer.
> B) The absence of an OPTIONAL field of type SEQUENCE OF is indicated by
> a NULL pointer.
>
> It would appear, then, that there is no semantic difference between an
> empty SEQUENCE OF and an OPTIONAL field of type SEQUENCE OF that is
> not present. Is this true?

No, not true.  I'll send you private email in a minute answering your
question, as [EMAIL PROTECTED] is meant for general ASN.1 or encoding rules
questions, not vendor-specific tech support questions.

In the future please send OSS support questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
or phone +1-732-302-9669 x-1 to speak with a tech support person.
Tech support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so feel free
to call whenever you wish.

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