[Resolved] not ===

[aaron_karp]

I want to validate a form field to make sure it is not blank.
The problem is, if someone enters "0", my test doesn't work:

if (!$variable) {
  echo "You forgot to enter something";
  exit();
}

this will exit if someone enters a zero in the field. i'm unaware of an !=== operator, and there's no "unless" construct like there is in perl (also, to the best of my knowledge).

any thoughts?

[aaron_karp]

As usual i figured out an easy answer as soon as i posted the question.....

just use

if ($searchterm == "")

Thanks though to anyone who read this 🙂

[khjart]

!== is the opposite of ===, not !===.
Therefore

if ($variable !== true)

will work as intended.

[LordShryku]

Actually, the proper check is with using [man]empty[/man].

if (empty($variable)) {
   echo "You forgot to enter something";
   exit();
}

Otherwise, if the variable has not been set, you would get E_NOTICE's of "Undefined Variable"

[Tekime]

But empty() will return true if you pass it a zero.

empty() returns FALSE if var has a non-empty and non-zero value. In otherwords, "", 0, "0", NULL, FALSE, array(), var $var;, and objects with empty properties, are all considered empty. TRUE is returned if var is empty.