Can I format NULL values in string.Format?

Question

I was wondering if there\'s a syntax for formatting NULL values in string.Format, such as what Excel uses

For example, using Excel I could specify a format value of

Answer 1

I don't think there's anything in String.Format that will let you specify a particular format for null strings. A workaround is to use the null-coalescing operator, like this:

const string DefaultValue = "(null)";

string s = null;
string formatted = String.Format("{0}", s ?? DefaultValue);