HTTP::cookie exists v.s. [string length[HTTP::cookie NAME]] ?

Yeah, I thought that myself.. but when JSESSIONID is null, [string length [HTTP::cookie JSESSIONID]] is still returning 1, which is what I'm having a hard time understanding.

 

 

If I fire up "tclsh", and try and run a string length against a variable with a null value, I should get 0.. right?

 

 

So here's a snippet of my logs from the test. First the code;

 

 

 

set ex [HTTP::cookie exists JSESSIONID]

 

set le [string length [HTTP::cookie JSESSIONID]

 

 

log local0. "DEBUG: ex: $ex le: $le"

 

log local0. "DEBUG: JSESSIONID: *******||*****"

 

 

And the output, if no JSESSIONID is set:

 

 

DEBUG: DEBUG: ex: 0 le: 1

 

DEBUG: JSESSIONID: *******||*****

 

 

 

So how is that possible? How can [string length[HTTP::cookie JSESSIONID]] return 1, when there is nothing in the cookie, and [HTTP::cookie JSESSIONID] returns false? If the "string length" command was evaluating [HTTP::cookie JSESSIONID] as a string, rather than interpreting it, I still shouldn't get 1.. I should get 25.. not 1.

 

 

I've worked around this oddity in my iRule already, so this is more of a curiosity at this point...