Can strings be null in Powershell?

Question

Why, in this powershell code, does the last statement resolve to true?

PS C:\> $s = [System.String]$null
PS C:\> $s.GetType()
IsPublic IsSerial Name                                     BaseType                                                                  
-------- -------- ----                                     --------                                                                  
True     True     String                                   System.Object 
PS C:\> $s -eq ""
True

Yes, or even [System.String]$s=[System.String][NullString]::Value. The meaning of the variable $null is NULL or an empty value. Somewhat related to Possible to pass null from Powershell to a .Net API that expects a string? — Jeppe Stig Nielsen
– Jeppe Stig Nielsen, Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 12:58

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:32:29Z

1

PowerShell always converts null strings to empty string Check accepted answer here for details : Passing null to a mandatory parameter to a function

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:32

CommunityBot

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answered Apr 7, 2016 at 0:33

smichaud

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1 Comment

Paul Raff Over a year ago

Sure, but the details there don't go into the question of why. It would be nice to understand the motivation here.

Bruce Payette · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-07 22:33:11Z

1

Basically so you never have to write string.IsNullOrEmpty() or get a null reference on a string in PowerShell. See Tony Hoare "Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake".

answered Apr 7, 2016 at 22:33

Bruce Payette

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