Why use Auth::check() if Auth::user() retrieves already authenticated user or null?

Question

Just to clarify the question, are the following statements equivalent, or am I missing something and introducing a security hole?

// 1
if(Auth::user()){
    // do something
}

// 2
if(Auth::check() && Auth::user()){
    // do something
}

Answer 1

Let's take a quick peek under the hood

public function check()
{
    return ! is_null($this->user());
}

So as you can see, all that check does, is check for null. Using Auth::check() is much easier when all you need to know if whether they are auth'd. It would make no sense to return an object if you're not going to use it.

Answer 2

the statement Auth::Check() just returns if user is logged in or not.

Auth::user() returns the user that's logged in, if have one.

$user_name = Auth::user()->name;

and you can retrieve user's data.