empty() Considered Harmful

PHP has a function—which may or may not be a function—called empty().

From its docs:

A variable is considered empty if it does not exist or if its value equals FALSE. empty() does not generate a warning if the variable does not exist.

First of all let's apply a little bit of logic. If the value equals false, that means that

  empty($foo)

is exactly the same as

  $foo == FALSE

which is, in turn, exactly the same as

  ! $foo

So these expressions are identical.

Except for one small thing:

empty() does not generate a warning if the variable does not exist.

Absolutely, never ever, in the name of all that is good and holy, even consider doing something like this.

I mean, for fuck's sake, this is a language that complains if an array index doesn't exist!

One of the most basic rules in programming is that you get the compiler and runtime systems to tell you when things are wrong as much as is humanly possible. The stricter the better! Except possibly in the case of PHP, it is almost certain that the person who wrote the language you're using is smarter than you are. It is certain that your compiler (or at least your runtime machine) knows whether or not what you have written is valid. If you suppress the computer's warning that you've done something wrong then you're a fucking idiot, pardon my English.

Testing a variable for empty instead of falseness does exactly one extra thing: it suppresses one of the most useful error messages actually available in PHP, which is that you've misspelled your variable name. Why in god's name would you do that?

The Sanctity Of The Symbol

See, the variable space is sacrosanct, OK? That's essentially rule number one. When you create a variable you are performing a ritual, a rite of ascension, that brings the abstract, incorporeal idea of an item of data from your grey matter and establishes it, manifests it in a real way in the script of your program. This variable serves a purpose: it is a vessel in which you are going to put information without which your routine will surely fail! It is a transferrable, mutable mug of the elixir of the programming gods, a chalice of the very stuff of which a program's execution is made.

Ideally, to create such a vessel would require some sort of incantation, a keyword of declaration. But if you don't have one, the next best thing is to have it be a horrible, terrible crime to try to sip juice from a cup that does not exist!

But! I hear you cry. But what of the processed symbol names? What of those, collected by a prefix, whose existence allows us to enumerate a user's input, and determine whether the input is enough, or missing, or will cause us to behave differently?

I say unto thee: That's what the associative array is for you bozo. An associative array, stored in the sacrosanct variable, is an anarchic, loose, free data dump, in which one can add arbitrary keys, string symbols inherently grouped under the bosom of the variable's own name, but milling around, free radicals in the womb of the variable. To complain about the non-existence of a key in an associative array is to complain about the non-existence of the girl from the ice-cream stall in the club you happened to wander into today. It is legitimate, nay expected, that in this array some information exists and some does not.

The non-existence of a variable is fact. It is not optional. Do not test for a variable's existence. Do not avoid the penalty for accessing one. If you cannot birth your variables with a word of magic, at least do not dismiss the warnings of the almighty when it tells you that your variable is not even there.