transform.find exception if child does not exist

Hi there,
I need to find some GameObject children by their name. This work perfectly fine if the child I am searching exists.
But if it does not exist, I get this exception:

NullReferenceException: Object
reference not set to an instance of an
object

According to the Unity docs, I would expect transform.find to return null instead of throwing an exception.

Any ideas?

GameObject productContainer; // parent Object that contains several (or null) children
GameObject item;

item = productContainer.transform.Find("product1").gameObject;
if (item == null)
    // this code is never reached - if "product1" does not exist an exception is thrown
    Debug.Log("Not found");  
else
    Debug.Log("Found");  // this code works if "product1" exists

Thanks in advance!

Look at this line carefully:

item = productContainer.transform.Find("product1").gameObject;

When you call the method

productContainer.transform.Find("product1")

It may return a Transform reference or it may return null. However you put a .gameObject right behind it. So if Find returns null you basically do:

item = null.gameObject;

which of course will throw a null reference exception since you can’t access the gameObject property of a null value. If you want to test if an object was found you have to check the return value of the method before doing anything with it:

GameObject item;
Transform tmp = productContainer.transform.Find("product1");
if (tmp == null)
    Debug.Log("Not found");  
else
{
    item = tmp.gameObject;
    Debug.Log("Found");
}

Note that it would be simpler to just define your item variable as Transform. However if you really need / want to use a GameObject variable you have to do it this way.