Dealing with empty segments

[eluser]furnak[/eluser]
Hi all,

I'm having a few problems with empty segments,

say I have a URI that goes

name/john/age/23/cat//dog//

how can I have it so that using,

$data = $this->uri->uri_to_assoc();

I end up with an array looking like

name => john
age => 23
cat => []
dog => []

instead of what I'm currently getting of,

name => john
age => 23
cat => dog

Thanks in advance