nulls in directories

[utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards]

>From decvax!duke!phs!dennis at Berkeley Mon Aug 10 20:23:26 1981
Here's a general query:

We have a memory problem which sometimes causes nasty things like nulls
to appear in directory entries.  Since namei() compares the full 14
characters of filename, but the gathering of a filename passed to a
system call stops at the first null (reasonably enough), these
filenames can never be opened, statted, or accessed.

The question is this:  is there any reason not to include a check in
namei which stops comparison at the first null?  I don't think so;
maybe someone out there can point out any folly in this.