empty Determine whether a variable is empty boolempty mixedvar empty returns &false; if var has a non-empty and non-zero value. In other words, "", 0, "0", &null;, &false;, array(), and var $var; are all considered empty. In PHP 4 and earlier, objects with empty properties are considered empty. This is not the case in PHP 5. &true; is returned if var is empty. empty is the opposite of (boolean) var, except that no warning is generated when the variable is not set. See converting to boolean for more information. ]]> ¬e.language-construct; empty only checks variables as anything else will result in a parse error. In other words, the following will not work: empty(addslashes($name)). See also isset, unset, array_key_exists, count, strlen, and the type comparison tables.