Being unfamiliar with PHP's loose typing, learners often mistake if(empty($someVar) with just if($someVar), thinking empty() will check for the empty-like values (like an empty string, zero number and such), whereas in PHP for this purpose could be used the variable itself: thanks to the type juggling, when using in the condition, it will be cast to the boolean value, which will effectively check for the "emptiness" already, making a dedicated function quite useless.