What is the best way to test for an empty string in Go?

Question

Which method is best (more idomatic) for testing non-empty strings (in Go)?

if len(mystring) > 0 { }

Or:

if mystring != \"\"         


        

Answer 1

Just to add more to comment

Mainly about how to do performance testing.

I did testing with following code:

import (
    "testing"
)

var ss = []string{"Hello", "", "bar", " ", "baz", "ewrqlosakdjhf12934c r39yfashk fjkashkfashds fsdakjh-", "", "123"}

func BenchmarkStringCheckEq(b *testing.B) {
    c := 0
    b.ResetTimer()
    for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
            for _, s := range ss {
                    if s == "" {
                            c++
                    }
            }
    } 
    t := 2 * b.N
    if c != t {
            b.Fatalf("did not catch empty strings: %d != %d", c, t)
    }
}
func BenchmarkStringCheckLen(b *testing.B) {
    c := 0
    b.ResetTimer()
    for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
            for _, s := range ss { 
                    if len(s) == 0 {
                            c++
                    }
            }
    } 
    t := 2 * b.N
    if c != t {
            b.Fatalf("did not catch empty strings: %d != %d", c, t)
    }
}
func BenchmarkStringCheckLenGt(b *testing.B) {
    c := 0
    b.ResetTimer()
    for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
            for _, s := range ss {
                    if len(s) > 0 {
                            c++
                    }
            }
    } 
    t := 6 * b.N
    if c != t {
            b.Fatalf("did not catch empty strings: %d != %d", c, t)
    }
}
func BenchmarkStringCheckNe(b *testing.B) {
    c := 0
    b.ResetTimer()
    for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
            for _, s := range ss {
                    if s != "" {
                            c++
                    }
            }
    } 
    t := 6 * b.N
    if c != t {
            b.Fatalf("did not catch empty strings: %d != %d", c, t)
    }
}

And results were:

% for a in $(seq 50);do go test -run=^$ -bench=. --benchtime=1s ./...|grep Bench;done | tee -a log
% sort -k 3n log | head -10

BenchmarkStringCheckEq-4        150149937            8.06 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckLenGt-4     147926752            8.06 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckLenGt-4     148045771            8.06 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckNe-4        145506912            8.06 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckLen-4       145942450            8.07 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckEq-4        146990384            8.08 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckLenGt-4     149351529            8.08 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckNe-4        148212032            8.08 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckEq-4        145122193            8.09 ns/op
BenchmarkStringCheckEq-4        146277885            8.09 ns/op

Effectively variants usually do not reach fastest time and there is only minimal difference (about 0.01ns/op) between variant top speed.

And if I look full log, difference between tries is greater than difference between benchmark functions.

Also there does not seem to be any measurable difference between BenchmarkStringCheckEq and BenchmarkStringCheckNe or BenchmarkStringCheckLen and BenchmarkStringCheckLenGt even if latter variants should inc c 6 times instead of 2 times.

You can try to get some confidence about equal performance by adding tests with modified test or inner loop. This is faster:

func BenchmarkStringCheckNone4(b *testing.B) {
    c := 0
    b.ResetTimer()
    for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
            for _, _ = range ss {
                    c++
            }
    }
    t := len(ss) * b.N
    if c != t {
            b.Fatalf("did not catch empty strings: %d != %d", c, t)
    }
}

This is not faster:

func BenchmarkStringCheckEq3(b *testing.B) {
    ss2 := make([]string, len(ss))
    prefix := "a"
    for i, _ := range ss {
            ss2[i] = prefix + ss[i]
    }
    c := 0
    b.ResetTimer()
    for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
            for _, s := range ss2 {
                    if s == prefix {
                            c++
                    }
            }
    }
    t := 2 * b.N
    if c != t {
            b.Fatalf("did not catch empty strings: %d != %d", c, t)
    }
}

Both variants are usually faster or slower than difference between main tests.

It would also good to generate test strings (ss) using string generator with relevant distribution. And have variable lengths too.

So I don't have any confidence of performance difference between main methods to test empty string in go.

And I can state with some confidence, it is faster not to test empty string at all than test empty string. And also it is faster to test empty string than to test 1 char string (prefix variant).