Last Updated: 2024-11-23

I had a function to delete empty strings in JavaScript.

for (let [key, value] of Object.entries(userInput)) {
  if (value && value == "") {
    delete userInput[key]
  }
}

When I ran it with the object {"key1": "something", "key2": ""}, it did not remove key2. Why?

The issue was that if (value) returns false because empty strings in JS are falsey.

The fix:

if ((typeof value !== 'undefined') && value == "") {
}

Lesson

In general, the rules for falsity are subtle and vary between every language. The safest thing to do is to explicitly check for presence or emptiness instead.