Nullable types are specific wrappers around the value types that allow storing data with a null value. A type is said to be nullable if it can be assigned a value or can be assigned null. In C#, you can mark a value type as nullable by the following two different ways.
Nullable<int> i = null;
int? j = 4;
Both declarations are equivalent and the easiest way to perform this operation is to add a question mark (?) after the type such as int? or bool?.
A nullable of type int is the same as an ordinary int plus a flag that says whether the int has a value or not.
T? represents all values of its underlying value type T and additional null value.bool? variable: true, false, or null.T cannot be a nullable value type itself.The value of the Nullable type can't be accessed directly, you need to use the GetValueOrDefault() method to get the assigned value or the default value if it is null. The default value for null is 0.
Nullable<int> i = null;
int? j = 4;
Console.WriteLine(i.GetValueOrDefault()); // It will print 0
Console.WriteLine(j.GetValueOrDefault()); // It will print 4
The two fundamental members of the Nullable<T> structure are the HasValue and Value properties.
HasValue property is true, the value of the object can be accessed with the Value property.HasValue property is false, the value of the object is undefined and an attempt to access the Value property throws an InvalidOperationException.Nullable<int> i = null;
if (i.HasValue)
Console.WriteLine(i.Value); // or Console.WriteLine(i)
else
Console.WriteLine("Null");
If you want to assign a value of a nullable value type to a non-nullable value type variable, you might need to specify the value to be assigned in place of null. You can use the ?? (null-coalescing operator) to assign a nullable type to a non-nullable type.
int? a = null;
int? b = 40;
int c = a ?? -1;
int d = b ?? -1;
Console.WriteLine($"c is {c}"); // output: c is -1
Console.WriteLine($"d is {d}"); // output: d is 40
You can also explicitly cast a nullable value type to a non-nullable type as shown below.
int? num = null;
int n2 = (int)num;
The above example will throw an exception if num is null.
All the examples related to the nullable types are available in the NullableTypes.cs file of the source code. Download the source code and try out all the examples for better understanding.