Hello everybody,

I have the following problem with conversion of an inputfield to a 
BigDecimal. The input has to distinguish between zero and empty string.

The page contains the following code: 

                <h:inputText value="#{sessionBean.testvar}">
                        <f:convertNumber type="number" />
                </h:inputText>

sessionBean.testvar ist a simple BigDecimal with default getter and 
Setter.

Submitting the page with a empty field sets testvar to an BigDecimal with 
value 0 and rerendering of the page brings up a "0" in the inputfield 
instead of leafing it empty.

Google and our analyse of the problem pointed the following:

We use this environment: Tomcat 6.0.32, MyFaces 1.2.10 

I found Tomcat runtime parameter 
-Dorg.apache.el.parser.COERCE_TO_ZERO="false" as a workaround.

https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43285#c7
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/systemprops.html

I don't want to use this workaround on our servers. (Not sure of 
side-effects on other apss)
What is the right solution to prevent this behaviour? Did I get sonething 
wrong?
Is there a better solution (in MyFaces I would prefer ;-) )?

Best regards

Jürgen Wieners