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You're reading from  Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

Product typeBook
Published inAug 2021
Reading LevelIntermediate
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803231549
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Neil Smyth
Neil Smyth
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Neil Smyth

Neil Smyth has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, including roles in software development and enterprise-level UNIX and Linux system administration. In addition to a bachelor's degree in information technology, he also holds A+, Security+, Network+, Project+, and Microsoft Certified Professional certifications and is a CIW Database Design Specialist. Neil is the co-founder and CEO of Payload Media, Inc. (a technical content publishing company), and the author of the Essentials range of programming and system administration books.
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12.7 Nullable Type

Kotlin nullable types are a concept that does not exist in most other programming languages (with the exception of the optional type in Swift). The purpose of nullable types is to provide a safe and consistent approach to handling situations where a variable may have a null value assigned to it. In other words, the objective is to avoid the common problem of code crashing with the null pointer exception errors that occur when code encounters a null value where one was not expected.

By default, a variable in Kotlin cannot have a null value assigned to it. Consider, for example, the following code:

val username: String = null

An attempt to compile the above code will result in a compilation error similar to the following:

Error: Null cannot be a value of a non-null string type String

If a variable is required to be able to store a null value, it must be specifically declared as a nullable type by placing a question mark (?) after the type declaration...

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Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition
Published in: Aug 2021Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803231549

Author (1)

author image
Neil Smyth

Neil Smyth has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, including roles in software development and enterprise-level UNIX and Linux system administration. In addition to a bachelor's degree in information technology, he also holds A+, Security+, Network+, Project+, and Microsoft Certified Professional certifications and is a CIW Database Design Specialist. Neil is the co-founder and CEO of Payload Media, Inc. (a technical content publishing company), and the author of the Essentials range of programming and system administration books.
Read more about Neil Smyth