A combination of two questions which I can't directly resolve from reading the v4.3 specifications. They're mostly hypothetical as most variants won't encounter this situation 
Question 1
If there is no INFO information (so: column 8 in the VCF file) present for a given variant, is the column just empty or is it represented by '.' ? Not every variant needs to have the same INFO fields present, so this scenario seems plausible.
Question 2
If There is no FORMAT/GENOTYPE information (so: column 9 and 10 in the VCF file) present for a given variant, are both columns empty or represented by '.' ? Same as above: not every variant needs to have the same FORMAT fields present, so this scenario seems plausible.
Question 1
If there is no INFO information (so: column 8 in the VCF file) present for a given variant, is the column just empty or is it represented by '.' ? Not every variant needs to have the same INFO fields present, so this scenario seems plausible.
Question 2
If There is no FORMAT/GENOTYPE information (so: column 9 and 10 in the VCF file) present for a given variant, are both columns empty or represented by '.' ? Same as above: not every variant needs to have the same FORMAT fields present, so this scenario seems plausible.