What does ?? operator means in C#?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What do two question marks together mean in C#?

Hi, I was looking for some trainings of MVC 2 in C# and I found this sintax:

ViewData["something"] = something ?? true;

So, what is that '??' means ?.

Solution 1

It's the null-coalescing operator.

It returns the first argument unless it is null, in which case it returns the second.

x ?? y is roughly equivalent to this (except that the first argument is only evaluated once):

if (x == null)
{
     result = y;
}
else
{
     result = x;
}

Or alternatively:

(x == null) ? y : x

It is useful for providing a default value for when a value can be null:

Color color = user.FavouriteColor ?? defaultColor;

---

COALESCE

When used in a LINQ to SQL query the ?? operator can be translated to a call to COALESCE. For example this LINQ query:

var query = dataContext.Table1.Select(x => x.Col1 ?? "default");

can result in this SQL query:

SELECT COALESCE([t0].[col1],@p0) AS [value]
FROM [dbo].[table1] AS [t0]

Solution 2

It is the null coalescing operator. The return value is the left hand side if it is non-null and the right hand side otherwise. It works for both reference types and nullables

var x = "foo" ?? "bar";  // "foo" wins
string y = null;
var z = y ?? "bar"; // "bar" wins
int? n = null;
var t = n ?? 5;  // 5 wins

Solution 3

If something is null, it returns true, otherwise it returns something. See this link for more.

Comments

[D'Arcy Rittich]

Somewhat strangely, object x = null ?? null; is a valid statement. I guess you can't expect the compiler to do babysitting, too!

[KeithS]

ReSharper will warn you of a possible NullReferenceException if you reference a member of x after this statement, but yes, it will compile.

[pjnovas]

wow! that's a nice point hehe