What's the difference between is_null($var) and ($var === null)?

Question

Is there any difference between this...

if (is_null($var)) {     do_something(); } 

and this?

if ($var === null) {     do_something(); } 

Which form is better when checking whether or not a variable contains null? Are there any edge cases I should be aware of? (I initialize all my variables, so nonexistent variables are not a problem.)

Answer 1

✅ is true

❌ is false

        | isset   | is_null | ===null | ==null  | empty   | |-------|----------|---------|---------|---------|---------| |  null |    ❌   |    ✅   |    ✅   |    ✅  |    ✅   | |  true |    ✅   |    ❌   |    ❌   |    ❌  |    ❌   | | false |    ✅   |    ❌   |    ❌   |    ✅  |    ✅   | |     0 |    ✅   |    ❌   |    ❌   |    ✅  |    ✅   | |     1 |    ✅   |    ❌   |    ❌   |    ❌  |    ❌   | |    \0 |    ✅   |    ❌   |    ❌   |    ❌  |    ❌   | | unset |    ❌   |    ✅   |    ✅   |    ✅  |    ✅   | |   ""  |    ✅   |    ❌   |    ❌   |    ✅  |    ✅   | 

Summary:🔸♦️🔸

• empty is equivalent to ==null
• is_null is equivalent to ===null
• isset is inverse of is_null and ===null

An important point is empty and isset do not trigger a PHP warning if their parameter is an undefined variable. So if you expect that the variable or array index which you are testing upon are always defined, use the operator otherwise use the function.

Answer 2

Provided the variable is initialized (which you did indicate - though I'm not 100% sure if this matters in this context or not. Both solutions might throw a warning if the variable wasn't defined), they are functionally the same. I presume === would be marginally faster though as it removes the overhead of a function call.

It really depends on how you look at your condition.

=== is for a strict data comparison. NULL has only one 'value', so this works for comparing against NULL (which is a PHP constant of the null 'value')

is_null is checking that the variable is of the NULL data type.

It's up to you which you choose, really.