Question

I have seen programming practices where a string or a boolean can be returned from a function. In such cases, is it recommended to check for empty() and isset() in the if loops, or will just doing a check like if($returnvar) will work or not.

Here’s a piece of code I am playing around with. What do you think should be the output and are the checks correct in the if condition?

Thanks,

<?php

function testMe()
{
 try
 {
  $returnText = 'John King Rocks';
  return $returnText;
 }
 catch (Exception $e)
 {
  return false;
 }
}

$str = testMe();
if ($str)
{
  echo $str;
}

?>

Answer 1

This code should work (for this specific example of $str), but checking for Boolean in PHP is risky, as you suggested, and should be done with caution, I would suggest (in general) to check it as follows:

if ($str !== false)
{
  echo $str;
}