Question

String.IsNullOrEmpty() appears to be an extremely well used method and I find myself wishing there were some shorthand for it. Something like ??? as it would be used in a similar context to the null coalesce operator but be extended to test for empty as well as null strings. I.e.

 string text = something.SomeText ??? "Not provided";

What would be your opinions on this? Would it unnecessarily bloat the language? Would it open the floodgates for other mid-level operations to be granted such deep integration with the compiler? Or would it be a useful addition for the language.

Answer 1

Phil Haack blogged about this a while ago. Basically, he suggests an extension method on string that lets you do

var text = someString.AsNullIfEmpty() ?? "Not provided.";

The extension method is very simple:

public static string AsNullIfEmpty(this string str)
{
    return !string.IsNullOrEmpty(str) ? str : null;
}

He also suggests a version checking for whitespace instead of just empty with the string.IsNullOrWhitespace() method from .NET 4, as well as similar extensions for the IEnumerable<T> interface.

He also talks about introducing new operators such as ??? for this, but concludes that it would be more confusing than helpful – after all, introducing these extension methods you can do the same thing, but it’s more readable, and it’s using shorthand syntax that “everybody already knows”.