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

Product typeBook
Published inNov 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781837635870
Edition8th Edition
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Author (1)
Mark J. Price
Mark J. Price
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Mark J. Price

Mark J. Price is a Microsoft Specialist: Programming in C# and Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions, with over 20 years' experience. Since 1993, he has passed more than 80 Microsoft programming exams and specializes in preparing others to pass them. Between 2001 and 2003, Mark was employed to write official courseware for Microsoft in Redmond, USA. His team wrote the first training courses for C# while it was still an early alpha version. While with Microsoft, he taught "train-the-trainer" classes to get other MCTs up-to-speed on C# and .NET. Mark holds a Computer Science BSc. Hons. Degree.
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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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C# 12 and .NET 8 – Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals - Eighth Edition
Published in: Nov 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781837635870

Author (1)

author image
Mark J. Price

Mark J. Price is a Microsoft Specialist: Programming in C# and Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions, with over 20 years' experience. Since 1993, he has passed more than 80 Microsoft programming exams and specializes in preparing others to pass them. Between 2001 and 2003, Mark was employed to write official courseware for Microsoft in Redmond, USA. His team wrote the first training courses for C# while it was still an early alpha version. While with Microsoft, he taught "train-the-trainer" classes to get other MCTs up-to-speed on C# and .NET. Mark holds a Computer Science BSc. Hons. Degree.
Read more about Mark J. Price