Question

This blows my mind. What am I missing?

I am trying to detect if a cell in an Excel sheet is empty or not. But none of the tests seem to work in the way I expect. I would expect that the simple “not idkt” test would detect both empty strings and None, but no… In fact, it seems like None is not detected by – well – any of the tests, because in the third row, that’s what is getting printed.

Code:

def getFromExcelSheet():
    wb = load_workbook("input.xlsx")
    idkts = [];
    idktRows = get_worksheet_as_list(wb.get_sheet_by_name('Inputs'))
    # print "Got these idkts" 
    for row in idktRows:
        # print row[0]
        idkt = str(row[2]).strip()
        filename = str(row[3]).strip()
        if idkt == None:
            print "Idkt == none"

        if idkt is None:
            print "Idkt is none"

        if idkt == u"":
            print "Idkt is ''"

        if idkt != u"":
            print "Idkt is !=''"

        if not idkt:
            print "not IDKT"

        if idkt:
            print "idkt"

        print idkt

Output

Idkt is !=''
idkt
3398041577

Idkt is !=''
idkt
3498100937

Idkt is !=''
idkt
None

Answer 1

idkt isn’t empty, it’s a string containing the word 'None'.
Here’s your issue:

idkt = str(row[2]).strip()

row[2] is a None, which becomes 'None' when you call str on it.
Try this:

if idkt == 'None': print 'yay!'

You’d be better off testing for emptiness before the string conversion:

idkt = str(row[2]).strip() if row[2] else None