Nothing = String.Empty (Why are these equal?)

Question

Why does the first if statement evaluate to true? I know if I use \"is\" instead of \"=\" then it won\'t evaluate to true. If I replace String.Empty with \"Foo\" it doesn\

Answer 1

Related to this topic, if you use a string variable initialized with "nothing" to be assigned to the property "value" of a SqlParameter that parameter is ignored, not included in the command sent to the server, and a missing parameter error is thrown. If you initialize that variable with string.empty everything goes fine.

//This doesn't work
Dim myString as String = nothing
mySqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@MyParameter", SqlDbType.Char).Value = myString

//This works    
Dim myString as String = string.empty
mySqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@MyParameter", SqlDbType.Char).Value = myString