[BUG] Committing a Deep Lake dataset changes an empty string stored in a Text column from "" to None in version 4.7.4

Severity

P2 - Not urgent, nice to have

Current Behavior

After inserting an empty string ("") into a Text column, the value is returned correctly before commit(), but becomes None after commit().

before commit: '' after commit: None

This occurs consistently across direct access, slicing, iteration, and query results.

Steps to Reproduce

run the following code

import deeplake
from deeplake import types

ds = deeplake.create("mem://empty_string_test")
ds.add_column("text", types.Text())

ds.append({"text": [""]})

assert ds["text"][0] == ""
print("before commit:", repr(ds["text"][0]))

ds.commit()

print("after commit:", repr(ds["text"][0]))
assert ds["text"][0] == ""

Expected/Desired Behavior

The empty string should be committed as empty string.

Python Version

3.10

OS

No response

IDE

No response

Packages

No response

Additional Context

No response

Possible Solution

No response

Are you willing to submit a PR?

• I'm willing to submit a PR (Thank you!)