Is there a reason this is necessary, versus just testing if mystringref.size() == 0? The only reason I'm concerned is that in a future C++ (17?) there is scheduled to be a similar class (unfortunately, it's looking like it will probably be called string_view) whose purpose and current proposed API are essentially identical to our string_ref, and I think it would behoove us to not add incompatibilities, in the hopes of one day just using the standard class.