How to check if a node is null in XML parser

[Ben Goswami]

Hi
how do I check if a node is null.  here is the piece of code


**************************
my $itemNodes = $cartNode->getElementsByTagName (ITEM_NODE_NAME);
for ..() {
        $itemnode = $itemNodes->item ($i);

        if (!$itemNode) {
               croak "ERROR:getItemVariation : itemnode not found";
        }
}
******************
The code  like <if (!$itemnode)> is not checj\king for null correctly: It
does not work when I do getChildnode alos instead of getElementsbyTag ..


thx
BG