Ruby test for "\0" null?

Question

I have some odd characters showing up in strings that are breaking a script. From what I can tell by put badstring to console they are "\0\0\0\0".

I'd like to test for this so I can ignore them...but how?

thought that's what blank? and empty? were for?!? :

> badstring = "\0"
 => "\u0000" 
> badstring.blank?
NoMethodError: undefined method `blank?' for "\u0000":String
    from (irb):97
    from /Users/meltemi/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.0.0-p195/bin/irb:16:in `<main>'
> badstring.empty?
 => false
> badstring.nil?
 => false 

Edit: Trying to recreate this in irb but having trouble:

> test1 = "\0\0\0\0"
 => "\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000" 
> test2 = '\0\0\0\0'
 => "\\0\\0\\0\\0"

what I want is a "\0\0\0\0" string so I can find a way to test if mystring == "\0\0\0\0" or something of the sort.

Answer 1

First of all blank? is a Rails helper. Try this instead:

badstring =~ /\x00/ 

if this returns an integer then the given string includes "\0", if this returns nil then the given string does not include "\0".

Answer 2

You could just remove "\0" chars with

badstring.delete!("\0")

Full example

badstring = "\0"
badstring.delete!("\0")
badstring.empty?
#=> true

Use delete instead of delete! if you want to keep the original string around.