Currently CCSM assumes that if a metric has a zero value, then it has not been "observed" within the code (e.g. if KW_GOTO_CNT is zero, then no goto keywords were found)
However this approach has some drawbacks, particularly with calculated metrics. For example, an empty function is expected to give a FUNC_NESTING value of 0. CCSM wouldn't display this value when using sparse output, as it would assume that zero meant that the metric wasn't holding a meaningful value.