Question

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Deep Null checking, is there a better way?
C# elegant way to check if a property's property is null

i have to do a lookup in a deep object model like this:

  p.OrganisationalUnit.Parent.Head.CurrentAllocation.Person;

is there anyway to evalute this and return null if any of the chain is null (organizationalunit, parent, head, etc), without having to do a

if (p.org == null && p.org.Parent == null && p.org.Parent.Head . . .     

Answer 1

You are looking for the null-safe dereference operator ?. (also known as safe navigation) that some languages (e.g. Groovy) have, but unfortunately C# does not have this operator.

Hopefully it will be implemented one day….

See also this post by Eric Lippert. The syntax he proposes there is .?.