How to check if a variable is empty in python?

See also this previous answer which recommends the not keyword

How to check if a list is empty in Python?

It generalizes to more than just lists:

>>> a = ""
>>> not a
True

>>> a = []
>>> not a
True

>>> a = 0
>>> not a
True

>>> a = 0.0
>>> not a
True

>>> a = numpy.array([])
>>> not a
True

Notably, it will not work for “0” as a string because the string does in fact contain something – a character containing “0”. For that you have to convert it to an int:

>>> a = "0"
>>> not a
False

>>> a="0"
>>> not int(a)
True