In your opinion what is more readable: ?? (operator) or use of if's

Question

I have a method that will receive a string, but before I can work with it, I have to convert it to int. Sometimes it can be null and I ha

Answer 1

Personally I'd go for the corrected version of your bosses - possibly with even more checks on it - if the string's empty, yours will, as you say throw an exception, as "" isn't a well formatted number and ?? only checks for null.

Something like:

public int doSomeWork(string value) {
  int someValue = 0;

  if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) {
    Int.TryParse(value, out someValue);
  }
}

Which resolves the issue where value equals "Forty Two".