How to check if a string is empty in Golang

Overview

In this shot, we will learn to check if a string is empty or not.

In Golang, we can do this by:

  • Comparing it with an empty string.
  • Evaluating the length of the string; if it’s zero, then the string is empty, and vice versa.

Example 1

The code below shows how to check if a string is empty by comparing it with an empty string:

package main
import (
  "fmt"
)
func main() {
  // initialize an empty and a non-empty string
  str1 := ""
  str2 := "edpresso"
  if str1 == "" {
    // will be printed on the console, since str1 is empty
    fmt.Println("String 1 is empty")
  }
  if str2 == "" {
    // will be skipped, since str2 is not empty
    fmt.Println("String 2 is empty")
  }
}

Example 2

The code below shows how to check if a string is empty by evaluating the length of the string:

package main
import (
  "fmt"
)
func main() {
  // initialize an empty and a non-empty string
  str1 := ""
  str2 := "edpresso"
  if len(str1) == 0 {
    // will be printed on the console, since str1 is empty
    fmt.Println("String 1 is empty")
  }
  if len(str2) == 0 {
    // will be skipped, since str2 is not empty
    fmt.Println("String 2 is empty")
  }
}

Note: If a string contains only white spaces, we can use the TrimSpace() method to remove them before checking if it’s empty or not.

Free Resources

License: Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA 4.0)