Flag usages of the safe navigation operator in contexts that expect/require a non-null value

[Attila Hajdrik]

I had a code snippet where I used the safe navigation operator and I think I’ve found an APEX issue, where IC2 could provide help as well (but IMHO source push should not succeed)

Take this code:

if (null) {
    System.debug('whoa');
}

When executing it, apex compiler correctly signals an error: Compile failure on line 1, column 5: Condition expression must be of type Boolean: NULL

The condition is clearly null which is not allowed

When I have this code:

String s = null;

if (s?.containsIgnoreCase('foo')) {
    System.debug('whoa');
}

This is valid code but runtime will cause a null reference exception because if becomes an if (null) when s is null, but explicitly doing that is compile time error.

The result of the expression is null | Boolean and APEX (and other languages) only allows Boolean.

What do you think Scott?

[Scott Wells]

Interesting suggestion, and it can be generalized to flagging any expression that is expected to resolve to a non-null value but includes the safe navigation operator, e.g., myInstance?.myCounter++. Yeah, I think this is worth flagging in the existing safe navigation operator usage code inspection. Thanks for filing!

[Scott Wells]

Yeah, I like this proposal. I implemented it this morning and it definitely adds more “safe” to the safe navigation operator, e.g.:

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This should be included in next week’s build as an enhancement to the existing Safe Navigation Operator Usage code inspection.

[Attila Hajdrik]

Awesome, thanks Scott, I hope it can help others as well ;-)

[Scott Wells]

Delivered in 2.2.3.7.