MATLAB: Is fullfile(0,0) undocumented behavior or bug

fullfileundocumented

What is the purpose, if any, of non-char inputs to fullfile?
>> fullfile(0)
> In fullfile>refinePath (line 93)
In fullfile (line 38)
Warning: Inputs must be character arrays or cell arrays of strings.
ans =
0
>> fullfile(0,0)
ans =
\
>> fullfile(0,0,0)
ans =
\ \
>> fullfile(0,0,0,0)
ans =
\ \ \
etc. This is the behavior in R2014b and R2016b on Windows 7 (only versions I tested).

Best Answer

This is a bug. fullfile should contain a test, if all inputs are strings or character vectors. This happens for 1 input directly, but for multiple inputs, file sepearators are appended at first such that the elements are converted to character vectors implicitely.
I assume the warning is not correct also, but only a hard error is sufficient to stop the user driving fullfile beyond its purpose.