Terning Nulls into Values

A former co-worker of David S wanted to check for nulls, and apparently, they had just learned about the ternary operator, so they wanted to combine these actions. That, itself, isn’t a WTF- using ternaries to coalesce nulls is a time-honored tradition and generally pretty effective.

Let’s see how this Java developer approached it:

return findProgram(
    id.isEmpty() ? null : id, 
    title == null ? null : title, 
    start == null ? null : start, 
    end == null ? null : end);

The first parameter actually makes sense to me, or at least isn’t the worst thing. I’m not fond of passing nulls around (optional types are almost always a better choice), but I don’t hate it.

Then we get the delightful, pointless checks that make this a true WTF. If title is null, pass a null, otherwise pass title. If start is null, pass null, otherwise pass start. And so on.

But hey, at least they got to use ternary expressions.