It is alway beholden upon the programmer to consider the edge cases. This particular trap is one I have found myself in several time wondering how $var_x ended up with a null value. Fully 80% of the respondents to this node also tendered code that produced this result - albeit we were providing solutions to the wrong problem!. There is a recursive solution to the actual problem that I posted here - doubtless you will be able to demonstrate a failure edge case.....but you get that....

cheers

tachyon

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