What are Explicit Null Checks for?

Question

I'm making a build of my game and noticed the 'Explicit Null Checks' tick-box in the build settings.

What does it do?

When should it be enabled and when should it not?

Answer 1

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Answer by RobAnthem · Feb 08 at 03:30 PM

Simply put. IF you have this set to true, your game will crash when it hits a null object. If it is set to false, your game will attempt to continue to run.

ideally a good programmer makes null checks everywhere that is necessary, and some places it would be redundant, but redundancy is good in programming. However, a programmer can't account for EVERYTHING, or forgets things, so sometimes null references still occur. This option exists to let the developer how to decide to handle those exceptions during runtime.

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CrowbarSka · Feb 08 at 05:14 PM 0

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Great explanation, thank you!

If you want to copy & paste it into the Answer bit below, I will mark this as resolved ;)

Meceka · Nov 08 at 05:37 PM 0

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Thank you for this answer but from my tests, it actually worked the opposite way.

When set to true, after a NullReference my game has an exception but continues to run. When set to false, after a NullReference my game froze there.

I tested this on a console build.

What are Explicit Null Checks for?

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