guard against null

[SimonCropp]

No description provided.

[nblumhardt]

Definitely an improvement; it's a shame we can't use ArgumentNullException.ThrowIfNull() and that there's no generic argument-returning version of that method :-(

Perhaps since our eyes are all going to get trained to glance over ArgumentNullException.ThrowIfNull() we could try aligning the naming somehow? ArgumentNullExceptionEx.ThrowIfNull() is truly horrific, but ... could maybe live with it? ANE.ThrowIfNull()? 🤔

I might need a chance to ponder a bit; agreed we should push forward in this direction somehow though 👍

[SimonCropp]

note that ArgumentNullException.ThrowIfNull is not available in older frameworks. so even if it wasnt generic, we should still need to polyfill

happy to name the type+method whatever u want. it could even be an extension method. so instead of Guard.AgainstNull(scalarType); it could be be scalarType.NotNull();

[SimonCropp]

i must admit i much prefer Guard.AgainstNull over ArgumentNullExceptionEx.ThrowIfNull. less characters, and reads better

[nblumhardt]

😆 yeah!

I'm not so much worried about the naming as drifting from what other codebases use and what the tooling supports.

E.g. in Rider I frequently add argument null checks using the

• "Check argument for null" and
• "Combine null check with assignment" actions,

both of which would generate inconsistent code once we switch to Guard. We'll also have to watch out for incoming changes in PRs, or end up with an inconsistent codebase 🤔

I'd swim against the current happily if the net positive was big enough, but with some more thought, I'm not sure it adds up in this case. What do you think?

[SimonCropp]

i see your concern. two points

• this is (mostly) for public APIs. which dont change too much in a codebase
• i can write a unit test that looks for ArgumentNullException and fails with "please use Guard.AgainstNull"

[SimonCropp]

i can write a unit test that looks for ArgumentNullException and fails with "please use Guard.AgainstNull"

done

[nblumhardt]

Nice! I'll loop back to this shortly. I'm wondering if we could use the same approach to enforce that we only use Guard on public APIs? 🤔

[SimonCropp]

I'm wondering if we could use the same approach to enforce that we only use Guard on public APIs?

it would be possible with cecil. but IMO it is reaching the point of diminishing returns