Is There a Better Way of Checking Nil or Length == 0 of a String in Ruby?

Question

Is there a better way than the following to check to see if a string is nil OR has a length of 0 in Ruby?

if !my_str         


        

Answer 1

First of all, beware of that method:

As Jesse Ezel says:

Brad Abrams

"The method might seem convenient, but most of the time I have found that this situation arises from trying to cover up deeper bugs.

Your code should stick to a particular protocol on the use of strings, and you should understand the use of the protocol in library code and in the code you are working with.

The NullOrEmpty protocol is typically a quick fix (so the real problem is still somewhere else, and you got two protocols in use) or it is a lack of expertise in a particular protocol when implementing new code (and again, you should really know what your return values are)."

And if you patch String class... be sure NilClass has not been patch either!

class NilClass
    def empty?; true; end
end