friendlymatthew opened a new issue, #8609:
URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow-rs/issues/8609
**Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge? Please describe
what you are trying to do.**
Consider the following:
```rs
fn foo() {
let mut b = VariantArrayBuilder::new(1);
b.append_null();
let v = b.build();
v.value(0); // will panic
}
```
Probing a `VariantArray` when that element is null will result in a panic:
```rs
thread 'cast_to_variant::tests::foo' panicked at
/Users/matthewkim/.cargo/git/checkouts/arrow-rs-583cca34693b79b8/760b7b6/parquet-variant/src/variant.rs:318:14:
Invalid variant metadata: InvalidArgumentError("Received empty bytes")
```
This seems like an odd pattern, as it's not clear exactly what a user should
do when iterating or probing through a `VariantArray`
**Describe the solution you'd like**
We could have `VariantArray::value(i: usize)` return an
`Option<Variant<'a>>`. This way, it's clear when it's `None`, that element is
considered `null`. _Note, this is different from `Some(Variant::Null))`_
**Additional context**
<!--
Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.
-->
This feature is motivated by
[datafusion-variant](https://github.com/datafusion-contrib/datafusion-variant),
a higher-level library that integrates with Datafusion through a series of udfs
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