Question

When I need to display a value that might be null/undefined in Javascript, I usually just write:
console.log(a||"");

Or something similar. Is there a similar way to do this in Java other than:

System.out.println(a!=null?a:"");

Answer 1

The best you can do besides using the ternary operator is to create a very short method to do the same. Perhaps “ns” for “nullable string”:

public static String ns(String nullableString) {
    return nullableString == null ? "" : nullableString;
}

Then you can write “System.out.println(ns(a));” However, the ternary operator is clearer – I would only do something like the above if I were doing this all over the place.