diff --git a/lib/linguist/blob_helper.rb b/lib/linguist/blob_helper.rb
index 3011bb83..71c2b520 100644
--- a/lib/linguist/blob_helper.rb
+++ b/lib/linguist/blob_helper.rb
@@ -470,7 +470,7 @@ module Linguist
         Language['Objective-C']
 
       # Matlab file function or class or comments
-      elsif lines.first.grep(/^\s*(function |classdef )/).any? || lines.grep(/^\s*%/).any?
+      elsif lines.any? && lines.first.grep(/^\s*(function |classdef )/).any? || lines.grep(/^\s*%/).any?
         Language['Matlab']
 
       # Fallback to Objective-C, don't want any Matlab false positives
diff --git a/test/fixtures/empty.m b/test/fixtures/empty.m
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..e69de29b
diff --git a/test/test_blob.rb b/test/test_blob.rb
index 9f2003c3..59c02571 100644
--- a/test/test_blob.rb
+++ b/test/test_blob.rb
@@ -307,6 +307,7 @@ class TestBlob < Test::Unit::TestCase
     assert_equal Language['Perl'],        blob("test-perl2.pl").language
 
     # .m disambiguation
+    assert_equal Language['Objective-C'], blob("empty.m").language
     assert_equal Language['Objective-C'], blob("Foo.m").language
     assert_equal Language['Objective-C'], blob("hello.m").language
     assert_equal Language['Matlab'], blob("matlab_function.m").language