nulls silently dropped even when using "protostuff.runtime.allow_null_array_element"

I don´t understand why these two produce different results.

static final class Foo
{
	Object o;
	Foo(Object o)
	{
		this.o = o;
	}
}

public static void main(String[] args)
{
	System.setProperty("protostuff.runtime.allow_null_array_element", "true");

	System.out.println("Serializing an ArrayList<String>:");
	roundTrip(true);
	System.out.println("\nSerializing a String[]:");
	roundTrip(false);
}

static void roundTrip(boolean bug)
{
	LinkedBuffer buffer = LinkedBuffer.allocate(512);

	Foo bef = bug ? new Foo(new ArrayList(Arrays.asList("1", null, "2"))) : new Foo(new String[]{"1", null, "2"});

	Schema<Foo> schema = RuntimeSchema.getSchema(Foo.class);

	byte[] bytes = ProtostuffIOUtil.toByteArray(bef, schema, buffer);
	buffer.clear();

	Foo aft = schema.newMessage();
	ProtostuffIOUtil.mergeFrom(bytes, aft, schema);

	if (bug) {
		System.out.println("Before: " + bef.o);
		System.out.println("After : " + aft.o);
		System.out.println("Set   : " + RuntimeEnv.ALLOW_NULL_ARRAY_ELEMENT);
	} else {
		System.out.println("Before: " + Arrays.toString((String[]) bef.o));
		System.out.println("After : " + Arrays.toString((String[]) aft.o));
		System.out.println("Set   : " + RuntimeEnv.ALLOW_NULL_ARRAY_ELEMENT);
	}
}

The output is:

Serializing an ArrayList<String>: Before: [1, null, 2] After : [1, 2] Set : true

Serializing a String[]: Before: [1, null, 2] After : [1, null, 2] Set : true

Notice how the null is silently dropped in the first output.

I have tried this with 1.6.2 and 1.7.2

[mikaelgrev]

Tried both cases i posted above with 1.8.0-SNAPSHOT with the new flag and they both now work just as I expect them would. Thanks, and good job!

[dyu]

Fixed in master. You can currently test with 1.8.0-SNAPSHOT Use: -Dprotostuff.runtime.preserve_null_elements=true It applies to both collections and arrays