isEmpty returns true for whitespace only strings

[ZooeyMiller]

since isEmpty just checks if the string's length is zero, it still returns true given a string of only whitespace, which I feel, for most implementations is not what people need when checking if a string is empty.

Perhaps implementing .trim() on the string before checking if it's empty is worthwhile? Perhaps, if the original behaviour is to be maintained, and not break existing code the function could look something like this:

function isEmpty(string, allowOnlyWhitespace = true) {
  return (allowOnlyWhitespace ? string.length : string.trim().length) === 0;
}

Would love to make a PR if this is deemed a worthwhile addition.

[profnandaa]

I'm 50-50 on this one, just because we can't "see" the space character, doesn't mean it's not there (empty)... On the other hand, having this as a choice with allowOnlyWhitespace sounds like a good idea to me, not just for b/c.

[ZooeyMiller]

@profnandaa I think that having an option for not allowing whitespace, as mentioned, is a good choice, so will make a PR to reflect this, and allow any other opinions to come up in PR review.

[RobertFischer]

@profnandaa @ZooeyMiller Did this PR ever get written/merged in? If not, I'm happy to write it. I was literally just looking for this functionality, although I expected it to be under the name isBlank (coming from Rails).

[ZooeyMiller]

@RobertFischer I never did write it! would be great to see a PR from you for it if you have the time as I still think it would be useful.

[ftrevo]

Credits to @ZooeyMiller for the pull request :)

[chriso]

Fixed by #880.