Question

I have read that C# allows local constants to be initialised to the null reference, for example:

const string MyString = null;

Is there any point in doing so however? What possible uses would this have?

Answer 1

My guess is because null is a valid value that can be assigned to reference types and nullable values types.
I can’t see any reason to forbid this.

There might be some far off edge cases where this can be useful, for example with multi targeting and conditional compilation. IE you want to define a constant for one platform but define it as null for another due to missing functionality.

Ex, of possible usefull usage:

#IF (SILVELIGHT)
    public const string DefaultName = null;
#ELSE
    public const string DefaultName = "Win7";
#ENDIF