What's the neatest way to achieve “MinOrDefault” in Linq?

Question

I\'m producing a list of decimal values from a linq expression and I want the minimum non zero value. However it\'s entirely possible that the linq expression will result in

Answer 1

This approach will return the single smallest Amount value from itemList. In theory this should avoid multiple round trips to the database.

decimal? result = (from Item itm in itemList
                  where itm.Amount > 0)
                 .Min(itm => (decimal?)itm.Amount);

The null reference exception is no longer caused because we are using a nullable type.

By avoiding the use of executing methods such as Any before calling Min, we should only be making one trip to the database