rails nil blank

rails nil blank

A concise explanation of nil v. empty v. blank in Ruby on Rails

up vote 7 down vote favorite 1	I find myself repeatedly looking for a clear definition of the differences of nil?, blank?, and empty? in Ruby on Rails. Here's the closest I've come: blank? objects are false, empty, or a whitespace string. For example, "", " ", nil, [], and {} are blank. nil? objects are instances of NilClass. empty? objects are class-specific, and the definition varies from class to class. A string is empty if it has no characters, and an array is empty if it contains no items. Is there anything missing, or a tighter comparison that can be made? ruby-on-rails ruby empty blank nil link | flag asked May 19 '09 at 22:51 Arrel 184  11 100% accept rate
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.nil? can be used on any object and is true if the object is nil .empty? can be used on strings, arrays and hashes and returns true if: String length == 0 Array length == 0 Hash length == 0 running .empty? on something that is nil will throw a NoMethodError That is where .blank? comes in. It is implemented by Rails and will operate on any object as well as work like .empty? on strings, arrays and hashes. nil.blank? == true [].blank? == true {}.blank? == true "".blank? == true 5.blank? == false .blank? also evaluates true on strings which are non-empty but contain only whitespace. "  ".blank? == true "  ".empty? == false link | flag edited May 21 '09 at 19:48 answered May 20 '09 at 16:14 Corban Brook 1,474  2  12

1 up vote   flag As mentioned in the question, some non-empty strings count as blank. –  Andrew Grimm May 20 '09 at 23:20   up vote   flag Thanks for catching that. –  Corban Brook May 21 '09 at 19:47 add comment

up vote 2 down vote	One difference is that .nil? and .empty? are methods that are provided by the programming language Ruby, whereas .blank? is something added by the web development framework Rails. link | flag answered May 19 '09 at 23:42 Andrew Grimm 2,544  6  17
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up vote 2 down vote	Don't forget any? which is generally !empty?. In Rails I typically check for the presence of something at the end of a statement with if something or unless something then use blank? where needed since it seems to work everywhere. link | flag answered May 19 '09 at 23:51   Andy
	2 up vote   flag .any? doesn't work with strings in ruby 1.9, as .any? requires enumerable, and string#each by itself doesn't work in ruby 1.9. –  Andrew Grimm May 20 '09 at 0:59 add comment

up vote 0 down vote	Just a little note about the any? recommendation: He's right that it's generally equivalent to !empty?. However, any? will return true to a string of just whitespace (ala " "). And of course, see the 1.9 comment above, too. link | flag answered Jul 13 '09 at 19:25 orangechicken 52 5
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up vote 0 down vote

Quick tip: !obj.blank? == obj.present? Can be handy/easier on the eyes in some expressions link | flag

posted on 2010-10-29 22:32  lexus 阅读( ...) 评论( ...) 编辑 收藏

转载于:https://www.cnblogs.com/lexus/archive/2010/10/29/1864821.html