StackOverflow has a good discussion about this exact topic in this Q&A.

So why not just return NULL here and then the caller only has to check for NULL.ĭoes anyone else struggle with this? Any help or insight is appreciated. Regardless of whether or not NULL or an empty Person Object ( new Person()) is returned the caller is going to have to check to see if the Person Object is NULL or empty before doing anything to it (like calling UpdateName()). In FindPerson(), returning NULL seems like a better fit. Also, this way, the caller would not have to check to see if a NULL was returned. In ReverseString(), I would say return an empty string because the return type is string, so the caller is expecting that.

Person FindPerson(int personID) // finds a Person with a matching personID. Take the following two methods as an examples: string ReverseString(string stringToReverse) // takes a string and reverses it. I am struggling with whether it is better to return NULL or an empty value from a method when the return value is not present or cannot be determined.

Kotlin do if not null