title: Eclipse: JSTL Validation: Confused About Warning Message: "empty" only for collections>
body: <p>I just migrated to Eclipse 3.7.2 from another IDE.   I'm maintaining a legacy webapp.</p>
  
  <p>Everything compiles and runs fine.</p>
  
  <p>Eclipse has given me two validation warnings on a JSTL conditional.  It is telling me I can only use "empty" on collections.  Googling people are using it for strings too.</p>
  
  <p>The conditional</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;c:if test = "${employee_record.show_pcell == 'T' &amp;&amp; not empty employee_record.phone_contact_1 }"&gt;
      &lt;tr&gt;
          &lt;td id = "fieldLabel"&gt;Personal Cell Phone:&lt;/td&gt;
          &lt;td&gt;${employee_record.phone_contact_1} &lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;/tr&gt;
   &lt;/c:if&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>employee_record is a HashMap of all string values</p>
  
  <p>Here are the two warning messages in regards to the conditional. </p>
  
  <pre><code>This empty expression always evaluates to false.  Only string, maps, arrays and collection have meaningful values for the empty operator
  
  This not will always result a value of true
  </code></pre>