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Bug #18805
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IO::Buffer is inconsistent when returning a string from an empty buffer
Description
I’ve been using IO::Buffer and I found it to be slightly inconsistent when it comes to returning empty string for empty buffers.
for example, a slice of an allocated buffer with size = 0, returns "" with get_string, as an example:
buffer = IO::Buffer.new(5)
empty_buffer = buffer.slice(0,0)
puts empty_buffer.size # this prints 0
empty_buffer.get_string # this returns ""
but, if you create a buffer with IO::Buffer.new(0) then it stops working
empty_buffer = IO::Buffer.new(0)
puts empty_buffer.size # this prints 0
empty_buffer.get_string # this raises The buffer is not allocated! (IO::Buffer::AllocationError)
Is this working as intended? It would be good I think to have a consistent experience where the base case (buffer with size 0) always returns an empty string.
I have a prototype of a possible patch I could send upstream to fix it, which would check the size of the buffer and if 0 it would always return an empty string.
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