@Uriel The default setting for ]box on preserves space at the cost of some information. using ]box on -style=max is equivalent to ]display and shows the prototype element for empty arrays. you can then see that the prototype for '' is a space and for ⍬ is a zero.
prototype of ⍬ is zero
also @Adám I don't think there's any builtin for substrings of an array is there?