Question

I came across the following expression in someone else’s code. I think it’s terrible code for a number of reasons (not least because it fails to take into account bool.TrueString and bool.FalseString), but am curious as to how the compiler will evaluate it.

private bool GetBoolValue(string value)
{
    return value != null ? value.ToUpper() == "ON" ? true : false : false;
}

Edit
Incidentally, aren’t the expressions evaluated from the inside-outwards? In this case, what’s the point of checking for value != null after the call to value.ToUpper() which will throw a null reference exception?

I think the following is a correct (deliberately) verbose version (I’d never leave it like this 😀 ):

if (value != null)
{
    if (value.ToUpper() == "ON") 
    {
        return true;
    }
    else        // this else is actually pointless
    {
        return false;
    }
}
else
{
    return false;
}

Which can be shortened to:

return value != null && value.ToUpper == "ON";

Is this a correct re-writing of the expression?

Answer 1

It looks like the method is indended to handle a value that comes from a checkbox HTML element. If no value is specified for the checkbox, it uses the value "on" by default. If the checkbox is not checked there is no value at all from it in the form data, so reading the key from Request.Form gives a null reference.

In this context the method is correct, althought it’s quite horrible due to the use of the if-condition-then-true-else-false anti-pattern. Also it should have been given a name that is more fitting for it’s specific use, like GetCheckboxValue.

Your rewrite of the method is correct and sound. As the value is not culture dependant, converting the value to uppercase should not use the current culture. So a rewrite that is even slightly better than the one that you proposed would be:

return value != null && value.ToUpperInvariant == "ON";

(The culture independent methods are also a bit faster than the ones using a specific culture, so there is no reason not to use them.)

Incidentally, aren’t the expressions
evaluated from the inside-outwards?

If it was method calls so that all expressions were actually evaluated, they would, as the inner call has to be made to evaluate the parameters for the outer call.

However, the second and third operands of the conditional expression is only evaluated if they are used, so the expressions are evaluated from the outside and inwards. The outermost condition is evaluated first to decide which of the operands it will evaluate.