<p>I am looking for a concise way to check a value to see if it is nil or zero.  Currently I am doing something like:</p>

<pre><code>if (!val || val == 0)
  # Is nil or zero
end
</code></pre>

<p>But this seems very clumsy.</p>

I believe your code is incorrect; it will in fact test for three values:
```
nil
```
,
```
false
```
, and zero. This is because the
```
!val
```
expression is true for all values that are false, which in Ruby is
```
nil
```
and
```
false
```
.
The best I can come up with right now is
```
```
if val == nil || val == 0
  # do stuff
end
```
```
Which of course is not very clever, but (very) clear.