Nullable types

A nullable type can represent all values of its underlying type plus an additional null value. A nullable type is written T?, where T is the underlying type. This syntax is shorthand for System.Nullable<T>, and the two forms can be used interchangeably.

A non-nullable value type conversely is any value type other than System.Nullable<T> and its shorthand T? (for any T), plus any type parameter that is constrained to be a non-nullable value type (that is, any type parameter with a struct constraint). The System.Nullable<T> type specifies the value type constraint for T (§10.1.5), which means that the underlying type of a nullable type can be any non-nullable value type. The underlying type of a nullable type cannot be a nullable type or a reference type. For example, int?? and string? are invalid types.

An instance of a nullable type T? has two public read-only properties:

· A HasValue property of type bool

· A Value property of type T

An instance for which HasValue is true is said to be non-null. A non-null instance contains a known value and Value returns that value.

An instance for which HasValue is false is said to be null. A null instance has an undefined value. Attempting to read the Value of a null instance causes a System.InvalidOperationException to be thrown. The process of accessing the Value property of a nullable instance is referred to as unwrapping.

In addition to the default constructor, every nullable type T? has a public constructor that takes a single argument of type T. Given a value x of type T, a constructor invocation of the form

new T?(x)

creates a non-null instance of T? for which the Value property is x. The process of creating a non-null instance of a nullable type for a given value is referred to as wrapping.

Implicit conversions are available from the null literal to T? (§6.1.5) and from T to T? (§6.1.4).