What this 'null' check doing here...

Richard Deeming

That's one of the reasons why I tend to prefer the method-call syntax for most LINQ queries - if you remove the .Where(filter) clause, your code still looks sensible.

return DataModel.Employees.Where(oRec => oRec.DepartmentID == departmentId).ToList();

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

Johnny YYZ

You owe me for the bandwidth cost of 2396 unnecessary :doh:s! Only the icon has 831 bytes, which amounts to a total of 1,991,076 wasted bytes. Gotta count now the extra html chars and send you the invoice! :doh: :sigh: :laugh:

David C Thompson

Probably code that has been edited and then not refactored. No real wtf here, ey?

bencr

It isn't really filling the list, it's replacing the reference with the result of that method call. I don't think that's what he meant though. A bit pedantic, I'm sorry.

englebart

More like the garbage collector...

Mark Starr

Guess I don't know c# well enough, but I didn't this you could use any comparison operator against NULL. it's probably bad practice to even if the language allows it.

GrumpyPants

Check your version control. It's possible declaration and/or the assignment at declaration was added later. If an earlier version of the method had the List passed as a parameter, then the test for non-null would make sense.

RafagaX

I bet the person who wrote this comes from a C/C++ background, there, you have to check for null every time or you may blow out something...

CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

Michael Losinski

The only thing that I can think of is technically new doesn't guarantee that the variable initialization will take place. In programming languages like c++ it could return null. This could happen if the memory was so fragmented that the allocation failed. However, instead of returning null in C# I believe it throws a out of memory exception. I have only seen this done in system critical embedded systems.

Nilesh Shahane

He is just double checking. :)

peterchen

That's a real conundrum for the GC - "OK, if this object is still around, at this point, I can't GC it until then. But... but what if I ... secretlly GC it before the if?"

ORDER BY what user wants

MainFrameMan_ALIVE_AND_WELL

Looks like a newbie whose prof in 101 programming hammered down checking objects before using them. This would be sensible if it were a thousand lines down in the code, but, if it is null where is the property/method to new it up?

KP Lee

Pete O'Hanlon wrote:

I was reading != as == here

Thanks for the explanation, for a normally sensible person, I was wondering what you were smoking or what I missed with your prior comment too.

Mohammed Hameed

Quote:

It's possible declaration and/or the assignment at declaration was added later.

Ok but in the case if it is added later also, the guy should have removed the null check as it is not applicable now. Anyhow that wasn't the case, I checked the source control :)