Meson has a common pattern of using 'if len(foo) == 0:' or
'if len(foo) != 0:', however, this is a common anti-pattern in python.
Instead tests for emptiness/non-emptiness should be done with a simple
'if foo:' or 'if not foo:'
Consider the following:
>>> import timeit
>>> timeit.timeit('if len([]) == 0: pass')
0.10730923599840025
>>> timeit.timeit('if not []: pass')
0.030033907998586074
>>> timeit.timeit('if len(['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']) == 0: pass')
0.1154778649979562
>>> timeit.timeit("if not ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']: pass")
0.08259823200205574
>>> timeit.timeit('if len("") == 0: pass')
0.089759664999292
>>> timeit.timeit('if not "": pass')
0.02340641999762738
>>> timeit.timeit('if len("foo") == 0: pass')
0.08848102600313723
>>> timeit.timeit('if not "foo": pass')
0.04032287199879647
And for the one additional case of 'if len(foo.strip()) == 0', which can
be replaced with 'if not foo.isspace()'
>>> timeit.timeit('if len(" ".strip()) == 0: pass')
0.15294511600222904
>>> timeit.timeit('if " ".isspace(): pass')
0.09413968399894657
>>> timeit.timeit('if len(" abc".strip()) == 0: pass')
0.2023209120015963
>>> timeit.timeit('if " abc".isspace(): pass')
0.09571301700270851
In other words, it's always a win to not use len(), when you don't
actually want to check the length.
Kyle Stone
Jussi Pakkanen
Michael Brockus
Andrei Antonov
Aleksey Filippov
Luke Shumaker
Dylan Baker
Elliott Sales de Andrade