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 really like Rails blank? method for that kind of things, but it won't return true for 0. So you can add your method:

def nil_zero? 
  if respond_to?(:zero?) 
    zero? 
  else 
    !self 
  end 
end 

And it will check if some value is nil or 0:

nil.nil_zero?
=> true
0.nil_zero?
=> true
10.nil_zero?
=> false

if val.nil_zero?
  #...
end