Input being converted to integers in form array

[thatos]

I have the following code in an html form

<input type="text" name = 'ions[1]'>
<input type="text" name = 'ions[2]'>
<input type="text" name = 'ions[3]'>

The form is then posted to an php function which does the following

foreach($ions as $ion_id =>  $value){
  echo $ion_id . " " . $value;
}

The above returns incorrect results for the following input

ions[1] = "";
ions[2] = "12.34";
ions[3] = "3";

prints the following

1 0
2 12
3 3

Can someone please tell me how to fix this problem whereby a 0 is returned when an input field is empty and of preventing the numbers from being converted to integers. I tried to check if the value is 0 and not consider this but this results in a problem if the value typed in is 0.

[Dormilich]

I don’t know where it happens, but there is definitely an integer cast somewhere before that.

what does var_dump($ions) ; give out?