Why does json_decode return null for empty array?

Question

Why would this echo \"NULL\"? In my would it would be decoded to an empty array.

Is it something obvious I\'m missing?

Answer 1

This is because array()==NULL. It does not check the object type in this case.

gettype(null) returns null, whereas

gettype(array()) returns array. Hope you got the difference.

Probably what you need is

if ($json_decoded === null) {
   echo "NULL";
} else
{
   echo "NOT NULL";
}