The kerneldoc for request_firmware_nowait() says that it may call the
provided cont() callback with @fw == NULL, if the firmware request
fails. However, this is not the case when called with an empty string
(""). This case is short-circuited by the 'name[0] == '\0'' check
introduced in commit 471b095dfe0d ("firmware_class: make sure fw requests
contain a name"), so _request_firmware() never gets to set the fw to
NULL.
Noticed while using the new 'trigger_async_request' testing hook: