A neater way of handling bools in C#

Question

Working with nullable bools in C# I find myself writing this pattern a lot

if(model.some_value == null || model.some_value == false)
{
    // do things if some_value is not true
}

Is there a more compact way to express this statement? I can't use non-nullable bools because I can't change the model, and I can't do this

if(model.some_value != true)
{
    // do things if some_value is not true
}

Because this will throw a null reference exception if model.some_value is null

One idea I had: I could write an extension method for bools like String.IsNullOrEmpty - bool.IsNullOrFalse. This would be neat enough but I'm wondering if there's some more obvious way of doing this already?

second code block work perfect. Why you did get null reference error. https://dotnetfiddle.net/yf1bro — Jenish Rabadiya, Feb 26 '15 at 11:12
@JenishRabadiya from msdn - _"If the HasValue property is true, the value of the current Nullable object can be accessed with the Value property. Otherwise, attempting to access its value throws an InvalidOperationException exception. "_ https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sksw8094%28v=vs.110%29.aspx — Gusdor, Feb 26 '15 at 11:15
@Gusdor did you looked at fiddle I provided. It works why would we aceess its value? second code block does not access it. — Jenish Rabadiya, Feb 26 '15 at 11:19
@JenishRabadiya I made the poor assumption that it was using Mono and discounted the results. — Gusdor, Feb 26 '15 at 11:39

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 26 '15 at 11:08

Use a null-coalescing operator to handle cases where the value is null.

if(model.some_value ?? false != true)
{
    // do things if some_value is not true
}

From msdn:

?? Operator (C# Reference)

The ?? operator is called the null-coalescing operator. It returns the left-hand operand if the operand is not null; otherwise it returns the right hand operand.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173224.aspx

Alternatively, a switch would do it.

switch(model.some_value)
{
    case false:
    case null:
    // do things if some_value is not true
    break;
}

why simple condition(model.some_value != true) wont work? look at this fiddle https://dotnetfiddle.net/yf1bro — Jenish Rabadiya, Feb 26 '15 at 11:13

A neater way of handling bools in C#

1 Answers1

?? Operator (C# Reference)