I don't like this... Is this cheating the language?

I have seen something like the following a couple times... and I hate it. Is this basically 'cheating' the language? Or.. would you consider this to be 'ok' because the IsNullOrEmpty is evaluated first, all the time?

(We could argue whether or not a string should be NULL when it comes out of a function, but that isn't really the question.)

string someString;
someString = MagicFunction();

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(someString) && someString.Length > 3)
{
    // normal string, do whatever
}
else
{
   // On a NULL string, it drops to here, because first evaluation of IsNullOrEmpty fails
   // However, the Length function, if used by itself, would throw an exception.
}

EDIT: Thanks again to everyone for reminding me of this language fundamental. While I knew "why" it worked, I can't believe I didn't know/remember the name of the concept.

(In case anyone wants any background.. I came upon this while troubleshooting exceptions generated by NULL strings and .Length > x exceptions... in different places of the code. So when I saw the above code, in addition to everything else, my frustration took over from there.)

c# syntax short-circuiting

Edit Report

A bit off topic but if you rand the same example in vb.net like this

dim someString as string
someString = MagicFunction()
if not string.IsNullOrEmpty(someString) and someString.Length > 3 then
    ' normal string, do whatever
else
    ' do someting else
end if

this would go bang on a null (nothing) string but in VB.Net you code it as follows do do the same in C#

dim someString as string
someString = MagicFunction()
if not string.IsNullOrEmpty(someString) andalso someString.Length > 3 then
    ' normal string, do whatever
else
    ' do someting else
end if

adding the andalso make it behave the same way, also it reads better. as someone who does both vb and c' development the second vb one show that the login is slighty different and therefor easyer to explain to someone that there is a differeance etc.

Drux

answered 2009-05-08T08:58:00.773

I don't like this... Is this cheating the language?

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