How does the assignment of the null literal to a System.Nullable type get handled by .Net (C#)?

Question

I was wondering if anyone knows how the C# compiler handles the following assignment:

int? myInt = null;

My assumption is that there is an

Answer 1

What really happens is that when you assign null to the nullable type instance, the compiler simply creates a new instance of T?, using the default constructor (the initobj IL instruction on Jb answer), so the following two lines are equivalent:

int? a = null;
Nullable b = new Nullable();

object.Equals(a,b); // true

Therefore you cannot do this:

Nullable c = new Nullable(null);

Something similar happens then you compare a nullable type to null:

if (a == null)
{
  // ...
}

Behind the scenes it just does a call to the a.HasValue property.