no rust programmer would ever return a sentinel string like this.
Are you sure about that? When backwards compatibility comes into the picture people tend to bend over backwards.
Backwards compatibility with what? Rust has always has had enum also for this exact case, to avoid encoding sentinels as strings or pointers.
im quite positive the only rust programmer who would do this is a C programmer who doesn't understand rust
why, because they all use agents to do the coding and don't check it?
because rust has features that makes doing it pointless.
in theory could someone do it? yeah, just like in theory someone could program a calculator to randomly rm -rf ~ when pressing +.
but in practice would anyone do it? no.
Cars without seatbelts and airbags chopping off driver's heads in relatively slow collisions? Well guess what, that could happen in a modern car as well if the driver sticks their head out the window while going through a very tight tunnel!
you followed up an incorrect comparison with another one, are you sure you're a rust programmer?