.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
false.blank? == true
[].blank? == true
{}.blank? == true
"".blank? == true
5.blank? == false
0.blank? == false
.blank? also evaluates true on strings which are non-empty but contain only whitespace:
" ".blank? == true
" ".empty? == false
Rails also provides .present?, which returns the negation of .blank?.
Array gotcha: blank? will return false even if all elements of an array are blank. To determine blankness in this case, use all? with blank?, for example:
[ nil, '' ].blank? == false
[ nil, '' ].all? &:blank? == true What is the difference between nil vs empty vs blank in Ruby?
I made this useful table with all the cases:
blank?, present? are provided by Rails.
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.
Answer #3:
A special case is when trying to assess if a boolean value is nil:
false.present? == false
false.blank? == true
false.nil? == false
In this case the recommendation would be to use .nil?
Answer #4:
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 " ").
What is the difference between nil vs empty vs blank in Ruby? Answer #5:
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.
Answer #6:
nil? is a standard Ruby method that can be called on all objects and returns true if the object is nil:
b = nil
b.nil? # => true
empty? is a standard Ruby method that can be called on some objects such as Strings, Arrays and Hashes and returns true if these objects contain no element:
a = []
a.empty? # => true
b = ["2","4"]
b.empty? # => false
empty? cannot be called on nil objects.
blank? is a Rails method that can be called on nil objects as well as empty objects.
Conclusion
Everybody else has explained well what is the difference.
I would like to add in Ruby On Rails, it is better to use obj.blank? or obj.present? instead of obj.nil? or obj.empty?.
obj.blank? handles all types nil, '', [], {}, and returns true if values are not available and returns false if values are available on any type of object.
Hope you learned something from this post.
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