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C# – ?? – Null Coalescing Operator

Published on February 2nd, 2008.

Very often you have to check different object if they are not null and then perform a kind of action with them. You would do this check like this:

MyClass value = this.getValueBySomeMethod();
Console.WriteLine((value == null) ? "No value returned" : value);

In C# 2.0 there is very useful operator – ?? (knows as null coalescing operator). It checks if the left operand is equal to null returns the right one. If it is not null => it returns it. Here is a simple example.

MyClass value = this.getValueBySomeMethod();
Console.WriteLine(value ?? "No value returned");

Isn’t is awesome? You safe writing redundant code and your code looks more pleasant.

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