Question on jsp:useBean

Hi Guys,
I have a question on jsp:useBean, I have a simple bean with two instance variables, one is of type String ( eg :name) and other is of type int ( eg:age).
Note : both vairables are not initilized
<jsp:useBean id="user" class="package.ABC"/>
Name :<jsp:getproperty name="user" property="name">
Age :<jsp:getproperty name="user" property="age">
What will be the outpt of these two jsp:getProperty with out using any jsp:setProperty
Basically it should return default values, if iam not wrong.
Name : null
Age : 0
one of the mock exam gives the right answer as
Name : null
Age : null
Kindly Clarify me
-Sathi
[ January 02, 2003: Message edited by: Satheesh Kumar S V ]

I tried it out on tomcat 4.0 and I got
name:
age:0
I thought that, as you say, it should of been the default values : String => null and int => 0!
I had a look at the servlet code generated by the container, here is what I saw:

I diden't find the documentation for JspRuntimeLibrary so I assume that JspRuntimeLibrary might override toString() and replace null with "" but I'm really not sure.
Sorry for the incomplete answer

Dominic

Hi,
Just try it out...

If you run it, you get the following response:
Name : Age :0
So you're right: getProperty returns 0 for age (and not null).
Greetings,
TK

Yes but for the name property, should't it return null instead of an empty String?

It does return null. Some JSP engines print null as the string "null", others (more sensibly) display it as an empty string.
- Peter

So this type of question would probably not appear on a real exam since, the result is container-dependent, right?
Dominic

Not sure. The specification is a bit vague on this -- it says that for the value returned by a JavaBean property the conversion to String is done as in the println() methods. Since JspWriter.println(), like PrintStream.prinln(), will print the string "null", this is arguably what a compliant JSP container should do as well. Only, many don't, and as a JSP developer who doesn't want his users to be confronted with confusing output that's the way I'd prefer it

- Peter