In this tutorial, we will look at how to check if a tuple is empty or not in Python with the help of some examples.
How to check if a tuple is empty?

Tuples are ordered collections of items (that are immutable) in Python. A tuple is empty if it does not contain any item. You can use the following methods to check if a tuple is empty or not in Python.
- Using the
len()
function. - Comparing the tuple with an empty tuple.
- Using the tuple in a boolean context.
Let’s now take a look at each of the above methods with the help of some examples.
Using the len()
function
The length of an empty tuple is zero.
You can use the Python len()
function to calculate the length of the tuple and then compare it with zero to check if it is empty or not. Here’s an example –
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# create two tuples - t1 is empty and t2 is non-empty t1 = () t2 = (1, 2, 3) # check if tuple is empty print(len(t1)==0) print(len(t2)==0)
Output:
True False
We get True
as the output for the tuple t1
as it is empty and False
for the tuple t2
because it’s not empty (has non-zero length).
Comparing the tuple with an empty tuple
You can also check if a tuple is empty or not by comparing it with an empty tuple using the ==
operator. Let’s look at an example.
# create two tuples - t1 is empty and t2 is non-empty t1 = () t2 = (1, 2, 3) # check if tuple is empty print(t1 == ()) print(t2 == ())
Output:
True False
We get the same results as above.
Note that here we use ()
without any elements to represent an empty tuple. You can also use the tuple()
constructor with default parameters to create an empty tuple.
Tuple in a boolean context
If you use a tuple in a boolean context, it will evaluate to True
if it has any elements and it will evaluate to False
if the tuple is empty. Thus, you can use the expression not t
to check if the tuple t
is empty or not.
Here’s an example.
# create two tuples - t1 is empty and t2 is non-empty t1 = () t2 = (1, 2, 3) # check if tuple is empty print(not t1) print(not t2)
Output:
True False
We get the same result as above. True
for the tuple t1
as it’s empty and False
for the tuple t2
as it’s not empty (t2
has three elements).
In this tutorial, we looked at three methods to check if a tuple is empty or not. Use the method that you are the most comfortable with.
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