bug#9653: 24.0.50; `ucs-names' - Why all of the ("" . XXX) entries?

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 05:53, Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com> wrote:

> Which seems more like a "null string"?
>
> -*- mode: C -*-
> char *null_string = NULL;
> char *empty_string = "";

empty_string, IMHO, though the names are certainly misleading. "" is
clearly a string, NULL is a null pointer to anything (or nothing).
There's nothing stringy in NULL.

I'm with Kenichi and Eli in this, I think "" is more correct/clean
than nil in this case. (or x "") is not difficult to use, but (and
(not (eq x "")) x) isn't rocket science either, and rests to see how
often it is needed anyway.

Funnily enough, a few years back I did a change to uniquify where I
defended the idea that a basename of "" and nil were one and the same
(basename being something with a narrow definition specific to
desktop.el) and Stefan argued (and prevailed) for the relevant
function returning "" and leaving the decision of treating it like nil
to the callers... And he was right: it was a cleaner, more generic
interface.

    Juanma