I need to know how to handle nulls when creating a new record from an incoming e-mail. The email is in plain text, values seperated by newline, like this example:

--emailbody below--

3

v2.3

2011-01-01

1500

0

56

--

now i capture each line in one string list, so that mylist[0]='3', mylist[2]='2011-01-01' and so on.

I then make a new record and upsert, like this:

MyObject__c r = new MyObject__c(Name = RptName, V_Name__c = Car[0].ID, Email_from__c = email.fromAddress,

//input from string list

Object_ID__c = integer.valueof(mylist[0],
version__c = mylist[1],
Report_Date__c = date.valueof(mylist[2]),
field4__c = integer.valueof(mylist[3]),
field5__c = decimal.valueof(mylist[4]),
field6__c = decimal.valueof(mylist[5]),
field7__c = date.valueof(mylist[6]),

//etc

);

upsert r Name;

return result;

my problem is that, in this example, i will get an exception for field6__c and field7__c (554 System.TypeException: Invalid decimal (or invalid date): ) because it cannot take the decimal value of null, which is exactly what lines 5 and 6 in the mail contains.

how can i do this in a better way? I want to create the record even if some lines are empty. Almost none of the custom fields in my object are required. So I do not simply want an exception stopping the entire process just because some lines are null.