Category_Pager ignores deliberated empty category_base setting

[alexmerz]

Describe the bug
In our WordPress setup we have set category_base to an empty string intentional.

This causes an issue with Category_Pager:

newspack-plugin/includes/class-category-pager.php

Line 46 in 2b3efad

if ( empty( $category_base ) ) {

If the category_base is an empty string, the class adds "category" to the URL hardcoded.

This means, we have later to fix the created URL:

add_filter( 'paginate_links', function( $link ) {
    $link = str_replace( '/category/', '/', $link );
    return preg_replace( '/\/$/', '', $link );
}, 10, 1 );

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to WordPress settings
2. Set category base to an empty string
3. Browse Paginated Category pages like example.com/my_category/page/2
4. Paginated links contain /category/my_category/page/x

Screenshots

Expected behavior
Category_Pages should respect an empty string as an category_base.