Null Safety

Abstract

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• Handles situation when we try to access non-existent resources gracefully
• For example, handling Segmentation Fault by moving the error from runtime to compilation
  

Optional Datatype

• A special Datatype that achieves Null Safety
• The Optional datatype contains either the data itself or None
• When a programmer writing his/her codes, the Compiler will only compile if he/she handles the Optional explicitly
• This only works on languages that support both Generics and Compilation

Safe Navigation

• Also known as Optional Chaining

• Provides a safe way to interact with potentially null values during runtime - when a null is encountered, the program will short-circuit and return undefined early

  
  

• In Node.js, we can place ? after the variable before accessing the value of the variable. If the variable is null, it will return undefined, instead of crashing

• When programmer writing his/her codes, he/she can use Linter to show codes that will lead to undefined