Why does .NET foreach loop throw NullRefException when collection is null?

Question

So I frequently run into this situation... where Do.Something(...) returns a null collection, like so:

int[] returnArray = Do.Something(...);
         


        

Answer 1

Because a null collection is not the same thing as an empty collection. An empty collection is a collection object with no elements; a null collection is a nonexistent object.

Here's something to try: Declare two collections of any sort. Initialize one normally so that it's empty, and assign the other the value null. Then try adding an object to both collections and see what happens.