Question about behaviour of git-checkout --patch option

Hi all!

I have a question about the behaviour of the git-checkout --patch/-p option.

I have a small local git repository containing empty and non-empty files. I wanted to replicate it in another directory and did the following:

	cd <target_dir>
	git init
	git remote add origin <origin_dir>
	git fetch
	git branch --track master origin/master
	git checkout master .

This works like expected, I end up with a 1:1 copy of the original worktree, including empty files. However, if I include the -p option in the last step:

	git checkout -p master .

... I correctly get asked for any non-empty files/hunks if I want to apply them - but not for empty ones. It would just display e.g.

	diff --git b/emptyfile a/emptyfile
	new file mode 100644
	index 0000000..e69de29

and then skip over it, asking for the next non-empty hunk.

Why does it skip over empty hunks?

Thanks!