php: '0' as a string with empty()

Question

I want a 0 to be considered as an integer and a \'0\' to be considered as a string but empty() considers the \'0\' as a string in the example below,

$var = \         


        

Answer 1

You cannot make it. That is how it was designed. Instead you can write an and statement to test:

if (empty($var) && $var !== '0') {
    echo $var . ' is empty';
}

You could use isset, unless of course, you want it to turn away the other empties, that empty checks for.

Edit

Fixed the check to do a type check as well, thanks to the 2371 for pointing that out :)