Question

String has a convenient String.IsNullOrEmpty method for checking whether a string is null or has zero length. Is there something similar in out-of-the-box .net?

Answer 1

This is a more generic extension method that will work on any IEnumerable.

    public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(this IEnumerable collection)
    {
        return collection == null || !collection.Cast<object>().Any();
    }

I’m not a big fan of functions that return true if something is empty, I always find most of the time I need to add a ! to the front of string.IsNullOrEmptyString. I would write it as “ExistsAndHasItems” or something like that.