Make null/empty handling explicit and safe—so empty values don’t break logic or even generate invalid syntax, and raw null-pointer checks are replaced with semantic, invariant-based checks. Guidelines: 1) Avoid “empty variable” syntax bugs (CMake): quote variables in comparisons. - Bad: `elseif(${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID} STREQUAL "Clang")` (breaks if the variable expands to empty) - Good: `elseif("${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID}" STREQUAL "Clang")` 2) Prefer semantic checks over raw pointer null checks (C++ containers/tensors): - Replace `if (ptr != NULL)` with `if (!obj.empty())` or equivalent invariants when available. - Example pattern: `if (!_bias.empty()) { /* use bias */ } else { /* no bias */ }` 3) Don’t over-defend against null in operations that are already null-safe: - `delete NULL;` is safe—unnecessary `if (ptr) delete ptr;` can be removed for clarity. 4) For null-terminated byte strings, ensure the correct terminator behavior: - When constructing/copying C-strings into custom buffers, allocate/copy consistently so the destination is properly null-terminated (e.g., consider whether you need `len + 1` and whether you copy `len+1`). Applying these rules reduces crashes, undefined behavior, and correctness issues caused by missing/empty/null values.