"string contains zeros" when formatting buffer

[edsrzf]

When formatting a buffer using %s and either width or precision, I often get the error:

error: string contains zeros

Some example code that lets me reproduce this reliably, but not 100% of the time:

(printf "%1s" @"")
(printf "%.1s" @"")

If I omit both width and precision, I never see the error. I've been able to reproduce this error on Linux (Alpine and Debian Docker images), but not on MacOS.