How to do ToString for a possibly null object?

user_44952 0
Viewed 124517

Is there a simple way of doing the following:

String s = myObj == null ? "" : myObj.ToString();

I know I can do the following, but I really consider it as a hack:

String s = "" + myObj;

It would be great if Convert.ToString() had a proper overload for this.

object null string .net c#
12 Answers

Even though this is an old question and the OP asked for C# I would like to share a VB.Net solution for those, who work with VB.Net rather than C#:

Dim myObj As Object = Nothing
Dim s As String = If(myObj, "").ToString()

myObj = 42
s = If(myObj, "").ToString()

Unfortunatly VB.Net doesn't allow the ?-operator after a variable so myObj?.ToString isn't valid (at least not in .Net 4.5, which I used for testing the solution). Instead I use the If to return an empty string in case myObj ist Nothing. So the first Tostring-Call return an an empty string, while the second (where myObj is not Nothing) returns "42".

user_3425940
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