So, uh, this was a little silly to track down. So, having the upper limit
as unsigned was a mistake, since this would cause negative valid lengths to
convert into an unsigned value within the first two flag comparison cases
A -1 valid length can occur if one of the strings starts with a null character
in a vector's first element. (It will be zero and we then subtract it to
make the length zero-based).
Fixes this edge-case up and expands a test to check for this in the future.
bec8b70e5d