[RSS] Going beyond the empty set: Embracing the power of other empty things

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240923-00/?p=110297

@buherator

The inability to handle zero-byte buffers makes everybody’s life harder.
Zero. It’s a valid number. Please support it.

It's wild that zero isn't supported when everything is in 1s and 0s.

@kaoudis I think what you describe is a slightly different case from the one in the post: you want to explicitly detect failure, while the author doesn't (note that there are no checks for empty).

Considering that even the Big Fat Policy Cat mentioned in the post couldn't prevent digression from the stated rule, it's a good question if trusting an API in a system with nullable types is a good idea in the first place...

Anyway, Mr.Chen usually answers comments, so it may worth to bring up these points at the source too!