Best ruby idiom for “nil or zero”

Question

I am looking for a concise way to check a value to see if it is nil or zero. Currently I am doing something like:

if (!val || val == 0)
  # Is nil or zero
e         


        

Answer 1

I believe your code is incorrect; it will in fact test for three values: nil, false, and zero. This is because the !val expression is true for all values that are false, which in Ruby is nil and false.

The best I can come up with right now is

if val == nil || val == 0
  # do stuff
end

Which of course is not very clever, but (very) clear.