On Dec 22, 2009, at 5:30 PM, Seebs wrote:

> But that doesn't help you in the case where you want to replace empty strings
> with '-'.  For that, maybe something like:
> 
> 	x = (x && !x.empty?) ? x : '-'
> 
> (That assumes x has an empty? predicate, not everything does.)

I've always found the easiest way to replace empty strings is:

x = '-' if x.to_s.empty?

Just about everything has a #to_s method, and nil evaluates to an empty string, so this will replace x if it is either an empty string *or* if it is nil *or* if x is currently not yet defined.

Cheers,