Protocols.XMLRPC contains the following:

protected mixed decode(string xml_input, string dtd_input, int|void boolean) { // We cannot insert 0 integers directly into the parse tree, so // we'll use magic_zero as a placeholder and destruct it afterwards. object magic_zero = class {}();

...

case "int": return (int)(data*"") || magic_zero; ... destruct(magic_zero); // Apply Magic! Replace magic_zero with real 0:s.

unfortunately this doesn't quite work:

Pike v7.9 release 5 running Hilfe v3.5 (Incremental Pike Frontend)

object magic_zero = class {}(); mapping foo = ([ "foo":magic_zero ]); destruct(magic_zero);

Compiler Warning: 1: Returning a void expression. Converted to zero. (1) Result: 0

foreach(foo; string key; mixed val){ write("%O\n", intp(val)); }

0 Ok.

in other words, in this situation, the magic zero is not recognized as an int.

this causes for example xml-rpc-call in modules/tags/additional_rxml.pike to fail:

format_response: else if (intp (val)) buf->add ("<int>", (string) val, "</int>\n"); ... else { // Gotta be a Calendar object. // Format this to be compatible with the iso-time attribute // to the <date> tag. buf->add ("<iso-date-time>", val->format_time(), "</iso-date-time>\n"); } failing with: Internal server error: Lookup in destructed object.