> Not according to the documentation.  'u' explicitly says it does not allow NUL characters.  'Z', 'u#', and 'Z#' all say they are "variants" of 'u' but never mention that they might allow NUL characters.

I understand the note in "u" description as explicitly saying that "u#" allows null characters.

The documentation for format units needs an update for other reasons and there is an issue with ready patch for this.