[backport 2.3.x] API: ignore empty range/object dtype in Index setop operations (string dtype compat) (#60797)
(cherry picked from commit ee06e714fcb35e0b6d321b3edd454eb0e363e5e4)

Backport of https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/pull/60797
This pull request is stale because it has been open for thirty days with no activity. Please [update](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/development/contributing.html#updating-your-pull-request) and respond to this comment if you're still interested in working on this. I guess this is not happening. Feel free to reopen if needed. @mroeschke FWIW best not to remove milestones from backport PRs, because then we will certainly loose track of them .. (or in general please add a comment when doing so, such that it generates a notification, because unfortunately github makes milestone changes silent)

I of course should have updated this a while ago, but ideally this still goes into 2.3.x (assuming there might be some more bugfix release) Ah sorry about that @jorisvandenbossche. Thanks for the reminder  There are a bunch of failures in the expression tests, eg `pandas/tests/test_expressions.py::TestExpressions::test_run_binary[eq-True-_integer_integers]`, but that doesn't seem related (and also seeing it on another backport PR) > There are a bunch of failures in the expression tests, eg `pandas/tests/test_expressions.py::TestExpressions::test_run_binary[eq-True-_integer_integers]`, but that doesn't seem related (and also seeing it on another backport PR)

Handling that in https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/pull/61638