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C# 12 and .NET 8 – Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals - Eighth Edition

You're reading from  C# 12 and .NET 8 – Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals - Eighth Edition

Product type Book
Published in Nov 2023
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781837635870
Pages 828 pages
Edition 8th Edition
Languages
Author (1):
Mark J. Price Mark J. Price
Profile icon Mark J. Price

Table of Contents (18) Chapters

Preface 1. Hello, C#! Welcome, .NET! 2. Speaking C# 3. Controlling Flow, Converting Types, and Handling Exceptions 4. Writing, Debugging, and Testing Functions 5. Building Your Own Types with Object-Oriented Programming 6. Implementing Interfaces and Inheriting Classes 7. Packaging and Distributing .NET Types 8. Working with Common .NET Types 9. Working with Files, Streams, and Serialization 10. Working with Data Using Entity Framework Core 11. Querying and Manipulating Data Using LINQ 12. Introducing Web Development Using ASP.NET Core 13. Building Websites Using ASP.NET Core Razor Pages 14. Building and Consuming Web Services 15. Building User Interfaces Using Blazor 16. Epilogue 17. Index

Working with null values

You have seen how reference types are different from value types in how they are stored in memory, as well as how to store primitive values like numbers in struct variables. But what if a variable does not yet have a value? How can we indicate that? C# has the concept of a null value, which can be used to indicate that a variable has not been set.

Making a value type nullable

By default, value types like int and DateTime must always have a value, hence their name. Sometimes, for example, when reading values stored in a database that allows empty, missing, or null values, it is convenient to allow a value type to be null. We call this a nullable value type.

You can enable this by adding a question mark as a suffix to the type when declaring a variable.

Let’s see an example. We will create a new project because some of the null handling options are set at the project level:

  1. Use your preferred coding tool to add a new Console...
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