How null's are handled in switch statement in C#, Java and JavaScript

Let’s start with C#. In C# nulls may show up in switch statement in two cases:

We switch on string type
We switch on nullable char, nullable integral type (byte, short etc.) or nullable enum

Both cases are handled by compiler in the same way, we just declare case null label and it will work out of the box.

This is illustrated by simple program:

using System;

public class Program
{
   public void Main() {
        int? n = GetDefault<int?>();
 
        // This will write null       
        switch(n) {
            case null: Console.WriteLine("null");    break;
            case 1:    Console.WriteLine("value 1"); break;
            default:   Console.WriteLine("default"); break;
        }


        string s = GetDefault<string>();
 
        // This will write null       
        switch(s) {
            case null:   Console.WriteLine("null");    break;
            case "foo":  Console.WriteLine("foo");     break;
            default:     Console.WriteLine("default"); break;
        }
    }
    
    // GetDefault returns null for nullable and reference type T
    private T GetDefault<T>() {
        return default(T);   
    }
}

Java switch and null’s

In Java null’s may show up in switch statement when we switch on primitive type wrappers like Integer or on String or on enum type. In that case Java will throw NullPointerException as is demonstrated by program:

public class Program 
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    String s = getNullString();
    try {
      switch(s) {
          // case null - doesn't compile:
          // error: constant string expression required
          // case null:  System.out.println("null"); break;

          case "foo": System.out.println("foo"); break;
          default:    System.out.println("default"); break;
      }
    }
    catch(NullPointerException ex) {
        // exception stack trace points to `switch(s) {` line
        System.out.println("null pointer exception");
    }
    
    FooEnum e = getNullFooEnum();
    try {
      switch(e) {
       // case null doesn't compile
       // error: an enum switch case label must be the unqualified name of an enumeration constant
       // case null: System.out.println("null"); break;
        
       case OPTION_1: System.out.println("option 1"); break;
       default:       System.out.println("default");  break;
      }
    }
    catch(NullPointerException ex) {
        // exception stack trace points to `switch(e) {` line
        System.out.println("null pointer exception");
    }
  }
  private static String getNullString() {
        return null; 
  }
  private static FooEnum getNullFooEnum() {
    return null;
  }
}

enum FooEnum {
  OPTION_1,
  OPTION_2
}

Program output:

null pointer exception
null pointer exception

As we have seen it’s not even possible to declare case null label.

In Java until you are 100% sure that value will not contain null you must explicitly check for null before switch as in:

FooEnum e = getNullFooEnum();

if (e == null) { 
  System.out.println("null"); 
}
else {
  switch(e) {
    case OPTION_1: System.out.println("option 1"); break;
    default:       System.out.println("default");  break;
  }
}

Or use trick with default value:

Integer n = getNullableInteger();

// -1 is default here, but you may use Integer.MIN/MAX_VALUE or any
// other value
switch((e != null) ? e : -1) {
  case 1:  System.out.println("1"); break;
  case -1: System.out.println("null"); break;
  default: System.out.println("default"); break;
}

WARNING: This Java behaviour may cause problems when we translate code from C# to Java.

JavaScript switch and null

JavaScript switch statement is very flexible, each case label may contain an expression that will be evaluated at runtime. To compare case label values to switch value JavaScript uses === operator.

In JavaScript there is no problem with using null and even undefined as case labels. Only tricky thing is with NaNs because NaN === NaN yields false in JavaScript. This is enforced by IEEE 754 standard that describes floating point numbers representation and behaviour. In other words we can use NaN as a case label but program will never enter block of code associated with that label. As a side note it’s worth to mention that in JavaScript NaN is the only value for which expression x === x yields false.

Following program demonstrates flexibility of JavaScript switch statement:

var values = [undefined, null, '', 0, NaN, 1, 'foo', {}];

values.forEach(function(value) {
    switch (value) {
        case undefined:
            console.log('undefined');
            break;

         case null:
            console.log('null');
            break;
        
        case '':
            console.log('empty string');
            break;
        
        case 0:
            console.log('zero');
            break;
        
        case NaN:
            // dead code here
            console.log('nan');
            break;
        
        case 1:
            console.log(1);
            break;
        
        // label with runtime expression here:
        case 'f'+'oo':
            console.log('foo');
            break;
        
        default:
            console.log('default');
            break;
    }
});

This program will write:

"undefined"
"null"
"empty string"
"zero"
"default"
1
"foo"
"default"

Notice that "default" was printed for NaN value.

That’s all for today, I hope you learned something new from this article.
May the Force be with you.

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Java switch and null’s

JavaScript switch and null