Unexpected use of OS_WriteN

I came across a strange (to me) use of this SWI in a program I was looking at, for example in BASIC:
SYS "OS_WriteN",A%,0 TO T$ where A% is the address of a zero-terminated string in memory, and on exit T$ is the string.

I suspect this is similar to the OS_GenerateError trick, but I have seen no reference to it.
Is it legitimate, and if so is it better or worse than OS_GenerateError ?

I hope you weren’t holding your breath…

It’s entirely legitimate, slightly less efficient, and slightly more logical than OS_GenerateError.

Also be aware that the same trick can be used while issuing a completely unrelated SWI, e.g. read null-terminated string and beep: SYS0,7,A%TO,A$