I once ran some tests to test this. What I found is that checking against null is much faster. Sorry I do not have the test code around anymore but it would be very simple to build again.
My guess as to why is that if (foo) is implicit and the conditional could be met by a couple things. if foo was a boolean it being null or false would cause the conditional to fail. If the object was a number it being null or <= 0 would cause the condition to fail. So on and so forth. When checking if (foo != null) you are explicitly checking if that object is null not if that object is null or false, or 0, ect so this check is much faster. I also think if (foo != null) is better syntax to look at because I can tell exactly what you are checking for, that is you are intersted in if foo is null not that it is == false or <= 0 or anything like that. I feel that if (foo) is lazy. So in the interest of speed and clean code you should always check for exactly what you want. --- In [email protected], "mitchgrrt" <mitch_g...@...> wrote: > > Other than style, are there reasons reasons to prefer using > > if (foo != null) > > rather than > > if (foo) > > Thanks. >
