A tiny refactor that has survived every Java version from 8 to 25: flip the null check. To guard against a NullPointerException when comparing a string to a literal, most developers write:
if (object != null && !object.equals("")) {
// do something
}You can collapse that to one expression by putting the literal on the left side of equals:
if (!"".equals(object)) {
// do something
}Because String.equals returns false when its argument is null, the literal form is null-safe for free. No explicit null check needed.
Modern alternatives
If you control the whole codebase, consider pairing this with Objects.equals(a, b) for two possibly-null values, or Optional.ofNullable(object).filter(s -> !s.isEmpty()) when you want a fluent chain. In 2026 code, StringUtils.isNotEmpty (Apache Commons) and Strings.isNullOrEmpty (Guava) are still common, but the flipped-literal idiom stays useful precisely because it needs zero dependencies.
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