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ARROW-6386: [C++][Documentation] Add documentation on interpretation of null slots #5231

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ARROW-6386: [C++][Documentation] Add documentation on interpretation of null slots #5231

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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions docs/source/format/Columnar.rst
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Expand Up @@ -214,6 +214,14 @@ value; any "masked" memory can have any value and need not be zeroed,
though implementations frequently choose to zero memory for null
values.

Null slots should be interpreted as unknowns. Thus if and only if an
expression referencing an array slot would evaluate identically for
every possible value of that slot then the expression's value is well
defined even if the array slot is null. For example,
``(slot 0 of [null, true, false]) AND false`` should evaluate to
``false``, since ``x AND false`` evaluates to ``false`` for all
possible boolean values of ``x``.

Fixed-size Primitive Layout
---------------------------

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