Null Semantics Drift

Kind: anti-pattern

Layer: Enforcement Core

Record: architecture:null-semantics-drift

Severity: discouraged

Scope: semantic_consistency

Formed by: Use null, undefined, empty string, zero, false, missing field, and empty collection interchangeably.

Canonical: Ontology

A defect in which null, empty, zero and missing are used interchangeably for one field.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Exception Control Flow and before Anemic Domain Model.

Refactored by

• Define Absence Semantics
• Introduce Typed Result
• Canonicalization

Severity

• discouraged

Category

• Anti-patterns

Force

• Semantic consistency

Violates

• Data Contract

Negated by

• Null Object Pattern

Linked from

• Anti-patterns
• Contracts / Interfaces / Compatibility
• Behavioral Patterns
• Error Handling / Resilience
• Schema / Canonical Data / Semantics
• Failure shapes
• Severity levels
• The forces