Truthiness in Conditionals

Instead of…

…overcomplicating your conditions.

# Example 1
unless something.nil?
  # do something
end

# Example 2
if !something.nil?
  # do something
end

# Example 3
if !!something
  # do something
end

Use…

# Instead of Examples 1,2 & 3
if something
  # do something
end

But why?

Performing a #nil? check as part of a statement in a negative conditional, as in the first two examples (unless or if !), is often redundant. Any nil value is ‘falsey’, so you can achieve the same result with a positive conditional and no #nil? check.

Remove the nil? check and substitute the unless for an if (example 1) or remove the ! (example 2) and end up with clearer code that means the same thing.

The syntax of !!, in the third example, is shorthand for turning any value (either ‘truthy’ or ‘falsey’) into the actual boolean values true or false. However, given Ruby’s ‘truthy’ conditionals performing this conversion is redundant.

Why not?

This comes down to understandability. If you really are checking for nil — perhaps you’re treating an empty array and nil in different ways — then, by all means, explicitly use the check.

This article has been translated to Japanese.