The ?. operator and ?[...] operator are called the null-conditional operator. It is also sometimes referred to by other names such as the safe navigation operator.

This is useful, because if the . (member accessor) operator is applied to an expression that evaluates to null, the program will throw a NullReferenceException. If the developer instead uses the ?. (null-conditional) operator, the expression will evaluate to null instead of throwing an exception.

Note that if the ?. operator is used and the expression is non-null, ?. and . are equivalent.

Basics

var teacherName = classroom.GetTeacher().Name;
// throws NullReferenceException if GetTeacher() returns null

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If the classroom does not have a teacher, GetTeacher() may return null. When it is null and the Name property is accessed, a NullReferenceException will be thrown.

If we modify this statement to use the ?. syntax, the result of the entire expression will be null:

var teacherName = classroom.GetTeacher()?.Name;
// teacherName is null if GetTeacher() returns null

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Subsequently, if classroom could also be null, we could also write this statement as:

var teacherName = classroom?.GetTeacher()?.Name;
// teacherName is null if GetTeacher() returns null OR classroom is null

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This is an example of short-circuiting: When any conditional access operation using the null-conditional operator evaluates to null, the entire expression evaluates to null immediately, without processing the rest of the chain.

When the terminal member of an expression containing the null-conditional operator is of a value type, the expression evaluates to a Nullable<T> of that type and so cannot be used as a direct replacement for the expression without ?..

bool hasCertification = classroom.GetTeacher().HasCertification;
// compiles without error but may throw a NullReferenceException at runtime

bool hasCertification = classroom?.GetTeacher()?.HasCertification;
// compile time error: implicit conversion from bool? to bool not allowed

bool? hasCertification = classroom?.GetTeacher()?.HasCertification;
// works just fine, hasCertification will be null if any part of the chain is null

bool hasCertification = classroom?.GetTeacher()?.HasCertification.GetValueOrDefault();
// must extract value from nullable to assign to a value type variable

Use with the Null-Coalescing Operator (??)

You can combine the null-conditional operator with the Null-coalescing Operator (??) to return a default value if the expression resolves to null. Using our example above:

var teacherName = classroom?.GetTeacher()?.Name ?? "No Name";
// teacherName will be "No Name" when GetTeacher() 
// returns null OR classroom is null OR Name is null

Use with Indexers