get_term_by slug with "0" as value

[fausonealessio]

Executing this code

get_term_by('slug','0','taxonomy_name')

my expectations were to obtain a taxonomy term, considering that one actually exists in my database, but instead the function returned false due to the PHP empty function returning true (see https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/4.7/src/wp-includes/taxonomy.php#L844).
The empty function behaves according to documentation (​http://php.net/manual/en/function.empty.php) but the string "0" should be accepted to be searched if it is possible to use it to create a taxonomy term.