Most elegant way to check if the string is empty in Python?

Question

Does Python have something like an empty string variable where you can do:

if myString == string.empty:

Regardless, what's the most elegant way to check for empty string values? I find hard coding "" every time for checking an empty string not as good. 

Answer 1

In Boolean context, sequences are evaluated either as FALSE or TRUE and empty strings are considered as false. 

So you can simply check if the string is false using:

if not mystring:

You can also use the strip() method:

if myString.strip():

print("not an empty string")

else:

print("empty string") 

In case, the variable is something other than a string, use this:

 myString== “ “

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Comments

This worked for me!

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A simple solution could be like this:
def isStringEmpty(inputString):
    if len(inputString) == 0:
        return True
    else:
        return False

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If your string can have whitespace and you still want it to evaluate to false, you can just strip it and check again. For example:

string = "   "
if not string.strip():
    print "Empty String!"

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But notice that, if your string is an empty space, the .strip() method will provide FALSE.

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This should work for you @chandini.
It certainly worked for me.

Answer 2

To check if the string is empty you should use the following methods:  

if not some_string:

Or you have another that you can use:

if some_string:

One point you should note that the sequences(string, tuples etc) are evaluated to False or True in a Boolean context if they are empty or not. They are not equal to False or True.

You can use the following video tutorials to clear all your doubts:-

Comments

This helps me a lot thank you.

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Nice Explanation, Thank You.

Answer 3

I think the most elegant way is using the following

if not myString:

simply for the fact that Empty strings are " considered false in a Boolean context, so you can just use the above

Comments

However, you may want to strip white space because:

 >>> bool("")
 False
 >>> bool("   ")
 True
 >>> bool("   ".strip())
 False

You have to be explicit in this unless you know for sure that this string has passed some sort of validation and is a string that can be tested this way.

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Very well explained!

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It worked for me.
Thanks!