Question

I was looking at a piece of code I wrote in C#:

if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(param1) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(param2) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(param3))
{
       // do stuff
}

and decided to make it more readable/concise

if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(param1+param2+param3))
{
       // do stuff
}

But looking at it I can’t help but cringe. What are your thoughts on this? Have you ever done something like this and do you use it whenever applicable.

Note: The code previous to this line would manipulate a collection by adding specific items depending on if the a param (param1,param2,param3) is NOT empty. This if statement is meant for validation/error handeling.

Answer 1

Personally I prefer the former over the latter. To me the intent is more explicit — checking if all parameters are null/empty.

The second also hides the fact it does handle nulls. Null strings are odd. Jason Williams above, for example, didn’t relise that it does in fact work.