Empty file

How it works

A legitimate empty marker means 'no records today.' A zero-byte object from a crashed upload means failure. The hot-folder rule must tell them apart. A hash of empty is stable and useless alone. Look at the producer.

A daily feed writes empty.csv when there is nothing to send. The importer accepts it. A crashed export also writes empty.csv. They switch the success path to a rename of a finished file and treat zero bytes in a temp name as failure.

How it differs

An empty file is not a partial file of unknown length. Zero is a known length.

Some tools skip empty files and hide a valid marker.

Include them in the manifest when they mean something.

On the ticket

• The practical close is a log line: time, actor, byte count, result.
• Without that line the transfer is a story.
• With it, the next person can see whether this door did what the ticket claimed.
• If the path is shared, say so in the partner profile so a later change does not silently pick a different limit, key, or region.
• On a real ticket, write down the door, the byte count, and the clock.
• For empty file, that means naming the host or bucket, the expected size, and the time the other side must have a complete file.
• A progress bar is not that record.
• A 200 response that arrives before the complete call is not that record.
• If a retry is allowed, say how many and whether it resumes.
• If a person must approve the send, name the person.
• Partners who receive empty file files should match on hash or size before they import.
• A same-length corrupt file passes a size check and fails a hash.
• Keep the published hash off the only channel an attacker can edit, or treat it as a corruption check rather than a substitution check.
• When the path changes, new key, new region, new cap, update the profile the same day so the next run does not use a stale limit.