Re: New RFC : empty() function

On Mon, Oct 30, 2023 at 4:21 PM tag Knife <fenniclog@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > However, according to my example, the variable is defined and has its > > value as 0 or false, and empty() returns true anyway. I confess that > > I've had some problems like this, and we chose not to use empty(), as > > sometimes 0 or false makes sense as a valid value. > > > > That is exactly as the documentation explains it. > empty is to check if a variable is not holding a usable value. > 0, false, true are all valid values and show the variable is not > empty. > > The purpose for empty is to check for undefined variables, empty > arrays or empty strings. > eg. "", [], null or undefined. > This is exactly where the problem lies. Is a string with just whitespace empty? Why would an ArrayObject with count 0 not be considered to be empty while an array with count 0 is? "empty" is subjective and therefore not a reliable function to use. Especially in legacy code I find that people use empty where they should've been using count() === 0 and have resulted in bugs that weren't discovered until months or years later. The variations of $a === '', count($a) === 0, ! isset($a), and $a === null already check all the scenarios you need, without risking funky bugs due to how the internal check for "falsy" values works.