From: Steven Haryanto <steven@...>
Date: 2001-06-16T17:58:00+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16532] Re: why only nil and false are regarded  as false?

On 16/06/2001 11:26, Dave Thomas wrote:
>Steven Haryanto <steven@haryan.to> writes:
>
> > I would appreciate some explanation on why Ruby behaves like
> > this
>
>I suspect because the alternatives in other languages were error
>prone. I know I've been bitten by loops that terminated prematurely in
>Perl.
>
>Do you have some examples where you'd like other values to be false?

So far my mind has been fitted with these idioms:

  # if string s is empty
  if (not s) ...

  # if number is zero
  if (not n) ...

  # if there are no elements in array a
  if (not a) ...

I believe this idiom goes as far back as C and perhaps even further.
However, in Ruby they will all be wrong. What are the preferred way
to do this?

Regards
Steve