Weird behavior of conditional operator?

Question

string sortedcolumn =
( dataGridView1.SortedColumn != null
? dataGridView1.SortedColumn.Name
: "username"
);

In above statment when dataGridView1.SortedColumn==null I get exception of dataGridView1.SortedColumn is null instead of getting value as "username" to sortedcolumn var.

Any idea?

Answer 1

Possible causes:

• dataGridView1 is a field or variable containing the value null.

• dataGridView1 is a property getter that returns null.

• SortedColumn is a weird property getter that returns something non-null the first time but null afterwards. (Very unlikely because then merely looking at it in the debugger would change the result.)

• dataGridView1, SortedColumn, or Name is a property getter that throws the exception you are seeing.

• dataGridView1.SortedColumn is of a type that overloads operator!=, which throws the exception you are seeing.

• dataGridView1.SortedColumn.Name is of a type that implements implicit operator string, which throws the exception you are seeing.