Possible Duplicate: Conditional operator assignment with Nullable<value> types? Hi, Why this doesn’t work? DateTime?

Question

Editorial Team

Asked: May 21, 20262026-05-21T21:30:00+00:00 2026-05-21T21:30:00+00:00

Possible Duplicate:
Conditional operator assignment with Nullable<value> types?

Hi,
Why this doesn’t work?

  DateTime? SomeNullableDateTime = string.IsNullOrEmpty("") ? null : Convert.ToDateTime("01/02/1982");

Is it an error somewhere? The problem seems to be the null because

  DateTime? SomeNullableDateTime = string.IsNullOrEmpty("") ? Convert.ToDateTime("01/02/1982") : Convert.ToDateTime("01/02/1982");

Works fine..

Thanks

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Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-05-21T21:30:01+00:00

Both conditional values need to be of the same type or allow implicit conversion from one type to another, like so:

DateTime? SomeNullableDateTime = string.IsNullOrEmpty("") ? (DateTime?)null : Convert.ToDateTime("01/02/1982");

More information can be found here, but to summarize:

Either the type of first_expression
and second_expression must be the
same, or an implicit conversion must
exist from one type to the other.

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