blank? and present? commit to return singletons [Xavier Noria & Pavel Pravosud]

The contract of blank? and present? was in principle to return Object, as we
generally do, the test suite and description was consistent with that, but some
examples had comments like "# => true".

This cannot be unclear, we either fix the examples, or update the contract.

Since users may be already assuming singletons due to the examples and the fact
that they were returned before 30ba7ee, the safest option seems to be to revise
the contract and the implementation of String#blank?

The motivation for 30ba7ee was to improve the performance of the predicate, the
refactor based on === is on par regarding speed.

With this commit we start documenting return types using YARD conventions. We
plan to document return types gradually.

1 files changed, 42 insertions, 18 deletions

diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/blank.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/blank.rb
index a4b3234fda..38e43478df 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/blank.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/blank.rb
@@ -4,36 +4,42 @@ class Object
   # An object is blank if it's false, empty, or a whitespace string.
   # For example, '', '   ', +nil+, [], and {} are all blank.
   #
-  # This simplifies:
+  # This simplifies
   #
-  #   if address.nil? || address.empty?
+  #   address.nil? || address.empty?
   #
-  # ...to:
+  # to
   #
-  #   if address.blank?
+  #   address.blank?
+  #
+  # @return [true, false]
   def blank?
-    respond_to?(:empty?) ? empty? : !self
+    respond_to?(:empty?) ? !!empty? : !self
   end
 
-  # An object is present if it's not <tt>blank?</tt>.
+  # An object is present if it's not blank.
+  #
+  # @return [true, false]
   def present?
     !blank?
   end
 
-  # Returns object if it's <tt>present?</tt> otherwise returns +nil+.
-  # <tt>object.presence</tt> is equivalent to <tt>object.present? ? object : nil</tt>.
+  # Returns the receiver if it's present otherwise returns +nil+.
+  # <tt>object.presence</tt> is equivalent to
   #
-  # This is handy for any representation of objects where blank is the same
-  # as not present at all. For example, this simplifies a common check for
-  # HTTP POST/query parameters:
+  #    object.present? ? object : nil
+  #
+  # For example, something like
   #
   #   state   = params[:state]   if params[:state].present?
   #   country = params[:country] if params[:country].present?
   #   region  = state || country || 'US'
   #
-  # ...becomes:
+  # becomes
   #
   #   region = params[:state].presence || params[:country].presence || 'US'
+  #
+  # @return [Object]
   def presence
     self if present?
   end
@@ -43,6 +49,8 @@ class NilClass
   # +nil+ is blank:
   #
   #   nil.blank? # => true
+  #
+  # @return [true]
   def blank?
     true
   end
@@ -52,6 +60,8 @@ class FalseClass
   # +false+ is blank:
   #
   #   false.blank? # => true
+  #
+  # @return [true]
   def blank?
     true
   end
@@ -61,6 +71,8 @@ class TrueClass
   # +true+ is not blank:
   #
   #   true.blank? # => false
+  #
+  # @return [false]
   def blank?
     false
   end
@@ -71,6 +83,8 @@ class Array
   #
   #   [].blank?      # => true
   #   [1,2,3].blank? # => false
+  #
+  # @return [true, false]
   alias_method :blank?, :empty?
 end
 
@@ -79,20 +93,28 @@ class Hash
   #
   #   {}.blank?                # => true
   #   { key: 'value' }.blank?  # => false
+  #
+  # @return [true, false]
   alias_method :blank?, :empty?
 end
 
 class String
-  BLANK_MATCHER = /\A[[:space:]]*\z/
+  BLANK_RE = /\A[[:space:]]*\z/
 
   # A string is blank if it's empty or contains whitespaces only:
   #
-  #   ''.blank?                 # => true
-  #   '   '.blank?              # => true
-  #   '　'.blank?               # => true
-  #   ' something here '.blank? # => false
+  #   ''.blank?       # => true
+  #   '   '.blank?    # => true
+  #   "\t\n\r".blank? # => true
+  #   ' blah '.blank? # => false
+  #
+  # Unicode whitespace is supported:
+  #
+  #   "\u00a0".blank? # => true
+  #
+  # @return [true, false]
   def blank?
-    self =~ BLANK_MATCHER
+    BLANK_RE === self
   end
 end
 
@@ -101,6 +123,8 @@ class Numeric #:nodoc:
   #
   #   1.blank? # => false
   #   0.blank? # => false
+  #
+  # @return [false]
   def blank?
     false
   end