How useful is C#'s ?? operator?

Question

So I have been intrigued by the ?? operator, but have still been unable to use it. I usually think about it when I am doing something like:

var x = (someObje         


        

Answer 1

I use it in working with methods that can return null under normal operation.

for example, lets say that I have a container class that has a Get method that returns null if the container doesn't contain a key (or maybe null is a valid association). Then I might do something like this:

string GetStringRep(object key) {
    object o = container.Get(key) ?? "null";
    return o.ToString();
}

clearly, these two sequences are equivalent:

foo = bar != null ? bar : baz;
foo = bar ?? baz;

The second is merely more terse.