Is returning null bad design?

user_141346 0
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I've heard some voices saying that checking for a returned null value from methods is bad design. I would like to hear some reasons for this.

pseudocode:

variable x = object.method()
if (x is null) do something
return-value null oop
24 Answers

For my use case I needed to return a Map from method and then looking for a specific key. But if I return an empty Map, then it will lead to NullPointerException and then it wont be much different returning null instead of an empty Map. But from Java8 onward we could use Optional. The above is the very reason Optional concept was introduced.

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