3. New Features in C# 6.0 - Null Conditional Operators

Who hasn’t heard of NullReferenceException? I am sure all of us. To avoid this, we use enormous If conditions for null checking.

Let us consider the code listing below. We have a list of “Author”. Before fetching the Name of a particular Author, we are performing the null checking in if statement. If we do not do that, a NullReferenceException will be thrown.

static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            Author author = null;

            List<Author> lstAuthors = new List<Author>();

            lstAuthors.Add(author);

            foreach(var a in lstAuthors)

            {

                if (a != null)

                {

                    var name = a.Name;

                    WriteLine(name);

                }

            }

            ReadKey(true);

        }

 In C# 6.0, we can avoid if statements by using Null Conditional Operators.  We can rewrite the above code for the null checking as shown in the listing below:

static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            Author author = null;

            List<Author> lstAuthors = new List<Author>();

            lstAuthors.Add(author);

            foreach(var a in lstAuthors)

            {

                var name = a?.Name;

                Write(name);

            }

            ReadKey(true);

        }

 In C#6.0 it is very easy to do the null reference checking using the null conditional operator (?). I am sure this feature would be wildly used, hence it’s one of my favorite features of C# 6.0.