?? Coalesce for empty string?

Question

Something I find myself doing more and more is checking a string for empty (as in \"\" or null) and a conditional operator.

A current example:

Answer 1

I like the brevity of the following extension method QQQ for this, though of course an operator like? would be better. But we can 1 up this by allowing not just two but three string option values to be compared, which one encounters the need to handle every now and then (see second function below).

#region QQ

[DebuggerStepThrough]
public static string QQQ(this string str, string value2)
{
    return (str != null && str.Length > 0)
        ? str
        : value2;
}

[DebuggerStepThrough]
public static string QQQ(this string str, string value2, string value3)
{
    return (str != null && str.Length > 0)
        ? str
        : (value2 != null && value2.Length > 0)
            ? value2
            : value3;
}


// Following is only two QQ, just checks null, but allows more than 1 string unlike ?? can do:

[DebuggerStepThrough]
public static string QQ(this string str, string value2, string value3)
{
    return (str != null)
        ? str
        : (value2 != null)
            ? value2
            : value3;
}

#endregion