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

If you are using rails, you can use #present?

require 'rails'

nil.present?  # ==> false (Works on nil)
''.present?    # ==> false (Works on strings)
'  '.present?  # ==> false (Works on blank strings)
[].present?    # ==> false(Works on arrays)
false.present? # ==> false (Works on boolean)

So, conversely to check for nil or zero length use !present?

!(nil.present?)  # ==> true
!(''.present?)    # ==> true
!('  '.present?)  # ==> true
!([].present?)    # ==> true
!(false.present?) # ==> true