RE: empty strings

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

An attribute must have one or more values.  Each value must
conform to the syntax constraints.  Some syntaxes, such as
directoryString, disallow empty values.

At 11:52 AM 11/22/00 -0600, Burkule, Sanju wrote:

>I am working on MS LDAP v 3. I have faced the same problem. Whenever you
>assign NULL as the value, with LDAP_MOD_ADD - it returns some error.

Yes, all attributes must have one or more values.

>If you
>try LDAP_MOD_REPLACE with NULL value, for an attribute which is already
>present with some other values - it is successful -

I assume by NULL you mean "no values".  If the attribute exists, it
should be deleted.  If the attribute does not exist, no error should
occur (in LDAPv3, unlike LDAPv2).

> but the attribute is
>removed from the object

Correct.

> - so a second call doing the same LDAP_MOD_REPLACE
>fails with LDAP_NO_SUCH_ATTRIBUTE. 

This is LDAPv2 behavior.

>I am trying to work around this problem, but there seems to be no standard
>way to store a empty string in LDAP. 

If the syntax allows it, you should be able to store an empty
string.  But note that empty value and no values are two different
cases.