Question

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What is the “??” operator for?

I have recently come across the ?? operator in C#. What does this operator do and when would someone use it?

Example:

string name = nameVariable ?? string.Empty;

Answer 1

The ?? operator basically means “or if it is null, blah“. It is equivalent to:

string name = (nameVariable == null) ? string.Empty : nameVariable;

Which, if you’re not familiar with the syntax, is basically:

string name;
if (nameVariable == null)
    name = string.Empty;
else
    name = nameVariable;