ToString() considered Harmful
When I was studying, Dijkstra had this famous anecdote that "Goto" statements are considered harmful and hence should be conisdered illegal! (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD02xx/EWD215.html)
I put forwrard a similar case for ToString(). Generations of programmers have been brought up to do ToString() without checking null and causes all kinds of harmful side effects long after the program is written.
C# has given us a wonderful keyword called "as" which essentially encapsulates the following
if(null != <your variable>
{
<another variable> = <your variable>.ToString()
}
So next time you are writing ToString() or toString() or another variant ... consider it carefully and use the above construct instead.
It is also a good practice as part of Defensive Programming.
I put forwrard a similar case for ToString(). Generations of programmers have been brought up to do ToString() without checking null and causes all kinds of harmful side effects long after the program is written.
C# has given us a wonderful keyword called "as" which essentially encapsulates the following
if(null != <your variable>
{
<another variable> = <your variable>.ToString()
}
So next time you are writing ToString() or toString() or another variant ... consider it carefully and use the above construct instead.
It is also a good practice as part of Defensive Programming.
I think the best option is, to not use the ToString() all together. Instead the Convert.ToString(); serves our purpose very well and it also handles the null values, which is not done by the
= Convert.ToString();
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Of Course this is just for C# .net codes!!
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