[ruby-core:103171] [Ruby master Feature#17773] Alias `Numeric#zero?` and `Float#zero?` as `Numeric#empty?` and `Float#empty?`

[marcandre-ruby-core@marc-andre.ca]

Issue #17773 has been updated by marcandre (Marc-Andre Lafortune).


I'm also against this proposal.

I do not believe that there are many cases where one checks for `.zero?` || `.empty?`. Note that `nil` nor `false` implement either.

If you need something like `blank?` or `trivial?` or similar, refinements are available.

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Feature #17773: Alias `Numeric#zero?` and `Float#zero?` as `Numeric#empty?` and `Float#empty?`
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/17773#change-91244

* Author: sawa (Tsuyoshi Sawada)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
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When dealing with user input fields as in web applications, there are typical values that we want to consider as the default and/or absence of user input. For string/text inputs, list items, and attributes, we have `String#empty?`, `Array#empty?`, and `Hash#empty?` respectively, which seem to correspond to those cases. As for numerics, there are `Numeric#zero?` and `Float#zero?`.

However, there is no single term that covers all these cases. In a routine to check through the fields whether there is user input, we have to selectively use `empty?` or `zero?` depending on the type of the input field.

Many programming languages other than Ruby typically consider these values as falsy with respect to logical calculation. Ruby handles only `nil` and `false` as falsy, and that has clear advantages in many aspects, but with the cost of losing a simple way to handle these default values.

I propose to alias `Numeric#zero?` as `Numeric#empty?` and `Float#zero?` as `Float#empty?` so that we can simply use `empty?`. At first, calling zero as empty might sound strange, but at least for non-negative integers, set theoretic definitions usually define zero as the empty set, so it is not that strange after all.


Ruby on Rails' `blank?` is conceptually similar to this, but `0.blank?` returns `false`, so it is a different concept.



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