Why a function checking if a string is empty always returns true?

Question

I have a function isNotEmpty which returns true if the string is not empty and false if the string is empty. I've found out that it is not working if I pass an empty string through it.

function isNotEmpty($input) 
{
    $strTemp = $input;
    $strTemp = trim($strTemp);

    if(strTemp != '') //Also tried this "if(strlen($strTemp) > 0)"
    {
         return true;
    }

    return false;
}

The validation of the string using isNotEmpty is done:

if(isNotEmpty($userinput['phoneNumber']))
{
    //validate the phone number
}
else
{
    echo "Phone number not entered<br/>";
}

If the string is empty the else doesn't execute, I don't understand why, can someone please shed some light on this please.

Answer 1

Simple problem actually. Change:

if (strTemp != '')

to

if ($strTemp != '')

Arguably you may also want to change it to:

if ($strTemp !== '')

since != '' will return true if you pass is numeric 0 and a few other cases due to PHP's automatic type conversion.

You should not use the built-in empty() function for this; see comments and the PHP type comparison tables.