andrei,
in my opinion we should only allow boolean result in condition expressions.
so if someone want to test if a pv value is null, empty string, 0, undefined, etc., the test should be explicit, like using your functions
defined($v) strempty($v) strlen($v)
but i'm not sure if it is in all cases possible to tell apart if a pseudo variable is undefined or if its value is null or 0. at least in the pass this has caused lots of confusion and if we can get it now cleared, it would be great.
-- juha