binary zero evaluates as true!?

Seriously guys... am I completely missing something important here? An empty array evaluates as false. The null character evaluates as false. The STRING "0" even evaluates as false yet a binary zero does not? Even better yet bindec() doesn't appear to be binary safe so it will work for a string representation of binary data where the 0's and 1's are ascii characters but pass it an actual binary string and it always returns 0. (sigh) Someone help me understand this. Isn't this a bug or oversight?