title: PHP Initialising strings as boolean first
body: <p>I'm in the habit of initialising variables in PHP to false and then applying whatever (string, boolean, float) value to it later.</p>
  
  <p>Which would you reckon is better?</p>
  
  <pre><code>$name = false;
  if (condition == true) {
      $name = $something_else;
  }
  
  if ($name) {  …do something…  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>vs.</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>$name ='';
  if (condition == true) {
      $name = $something_else;
  }
  
  if (!empty($name)) {  …do something…  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which would you reckon can possibly give better performance? Which method would you use?</p>