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

My refactoring would look like this

public int doSomeWork(string value)
{
   int result = 0; //default?

   if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
   {
      result = 0;
   }
   else
   {
      result = int.Parse(value); //you could also consider using TryParse(...) if your string could possibly also be different from a number.
   }

   //do some calculations upon "result"


   return result;
}

I'm currently reading Martin Fowlers book on Refactoring (wanted to read it already for a longer time now) and this is what I normally prefer and I found it is also a commonly suggested "pattern" in the book.