awk ignores fields with only spaces or empty

Hi,

Does any one know how to avoid the scenario where awk ignores the fields having only spaces or empty fields?

for instance,

Data: "a","b","c","d","","   "

code:
awk -F, '{ print NF }' File

the output I get is 4 instead of 6 do you know how to avoid this?

# cat file
Data: "a","b","c","d","","   "
# awk -F, '{ print NF }' file
6

still doesnt work. I am working on AIX

Its working for me in AIX v6

$ echo '"a","b","c","d","","   "' | awk -F, '{ print NF }'
6

Which version are you using?

its version 5. not sure why it is misbehaving.

cat file | tr "," "\n" | wc -l

Sorry - I realized later that the empty fields are just nulls.