working with gRPC allowed me to understand how go(lang)'s use of things like sql.nullstring works (pseudo'ish code}: astring = sql.nullstring{isNull=true, va

working with gRPC allowed me to understand how go(lang)'s use of things like sql.nullstring works (pseudo'ish code}: astring = sql.nullstring{isNull=true, value=""} if astring.isNull {don't do anything} else {process astring.value} So similarly, gRPC has a method called HasField, so: if packet.HasField(astring) {then process packet.astring} Is it wordy? Yes. Is it elegant? Sadly, No. But does it work? Yes.