[Mediawiki-l] $wgArticle->exists() on Special pages

[a@kid]

I have some functions that i wrote that use $wgArticle->exists() to  
determine whether a page exists. These functions are called by my  
skin and are used to build the interface.

Since upgrading from 1.5 to 1.6.3 these functions return fatal errors  
(Call to a member function exists() on a non-object) whenever they  
are called from a Special Page. I am guessing that this because the  
Special Page is not an article. However this worked fine in 1.5.

I can test for the Special namespace before using $wgArticle->exists 
() to avoid getting errors but i'm curious ... Has something changed  
between 1.5 and 1.6 that would change the behaviour of $wgArticle- 
 >exists() on Special Pages?

I've looked through the release notes for 1.6 and couldn't see  
anything that applied.

thanks