Taxonomy term description with style, only if the description exists?

Question

I am attempting to add a conditional function to my index.php that will return the description of a term in my custom taxonomy on the page for that term above the list of posts only if the description exists. I want it to be in a styled div (id="term-descr"). So I tried:

<code>
<div id="term-desc">
<?php echo term_description() ?>
</div>
</code>

It worked fine on terms I had the description for, but on all other pages I ended up with the styled outline of the div with nothing in it, which looks funny. I think the function returns a br or something when it returns no value. So I tried to come up with a conditional function to make this work, something like:

<code>
<?php if (term_description() != 0 ) echo {?>
<div id="term-desc">
<?php term_description(); ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

which doesn't work. I'm wondering if there is an easier way to do this or if I'm missing something.

Answer 1

term_description() returns a string, which might be empty.

So the test should be:

$term_desc = term_description();
# debug
print '<pre>' . htmlspecialchars( print_r( $term_desc, TRUE ), ENT_QUOTES, 'utf-8', FALSE ) . '</pre>';

if ( '' !== $term_desc )
{
    echo "<div id='term-desc'>$term_desc</div>";
}