When to check for undefined and when to check for null

Question

[Bounty Edit]

I'm looking for a good explanation when you should set/use null or undefined and where you need to check for it. Basically what are common practices for these two and is really possible to treat them separately in generic maintainable codee?

When can I safely check for === null, safely check for === undefined and when do I need to check for both with == null

When should you use the keyword undefined and when should one use the keyword null

I have various checks in the format of

if (someObj == null) or if (someObj != null) which check for both null and undefined. I would like to change all these to either === undefined or === null but I'm not sure how to guarantee that it will only ever be one of the two but not both.

Where should you use checks for null and where should you use checks for undefined

A concrete example:

var List = []; // ordered list contains data at odd indexes.

var getObject = function(id) {
    for (var i = 0; i < List.length; i++) {
        if (List[i] == null) continue;
        if (id === List[i].getId()) {
            return List[i];
        }
    }
    return null;
}

var deleteObject = function(id) {
    var index = getIndex(id) // pretty obvouis function
    // List[index] = null; // should I set it to null?
    delete List[index]; // should I set it to undefined?
}

This is just one example of where I can use both null or undefined and I don't know which is correct.

Are there any cases where you must check for both null and undefined because you have no choice?

Answer 1

Functions implicitly return undefined. Undefined keys in arrays are undefined. Undefined attributes in objects are undefined.

function foo () {

};

var bar = [];
var baz = {};

//foo() === undefined && bar[100] === undefined && baz.something === undefined

document.getElementById returns null if no elements are found.

var el = document.getElementById("foo");

// el === null || el instanceof HTMLElement

You should never have to check for undefined or null (unless you're aggregating data from both a source that may return null, and a source which may return undefined).

I recommend you avoid null; use undefined.

Answer 2

Some DOM methods return null. All properties of an object that have not been set return undefined when you attempt to access them, including properties of an Array. A function with no return statement implicitly returns undefined.

I would suggest making sure you know exactly what values are possible for the variable or property you're testing and testing for these values explicitly and with confidence. For testing null, use foo === null. For testing for undefined, I would recommend using typeof foo == "undefined" in most situations, because undefined (unlike null) is not a reserved word and is instead a simple property of the global object that may be altered, and also for other reasons I wrote about recently here: variable === undefined vs. typeof variable === "undefined"

Answer 3

The difference between null and undefined is that null is itself a value and has to be assigned. It's not the default. A brand new variable with no value assigned to it is undefined.

var x;
// value undefined - NOT null.
x = null;
// value null - NOT undefined.

Answer 4

I think it's interesting to note that, when Windows was first written, it didn't do a lot of checks for invalid/NULL pointers. Afterall, no programmer would be dumb enough to pass NULL where a valid string was needed. And testing for NULL just makes the code larger and slower.

The result was that many UAEs were due to errors in client programs, but all the heat went to Microsoft. Since then, Microsoft has changed Windows to pretty much check every argument for NULL.

I think the lesson is that, unless you are really sure an argument will always be valid, it's probably worth verifying that it is. Of course, Windows is used by a lot of programmers while your function may only be used by you. So that certainly factors in regarding how likely an invalid argument is.

In languages like C and C++, you can use ASSERTs and I use them ALL the time when using these languages. These are statements that verify certain conditions that you never expect to happen. During debugging, you can test that, in fact, they never do. Then when you do a release build these statements are not included in the compiled code. In some ways, this seems like the best of both worlds to me.

Answer 5

If you call a function with no explicit return then it implicitly returns undefined. So if I have a function that needs to say that it did its task and there is nothing result, e.g. a XMLHTTPRequest that returned nothing when you normally expect that there would be something (like a database call), then I would explicitly return null.

Answer 6

Undefined is different from null when using !== but not when using the weaker != because JavaScript does some implicit casting in this case.

The main difference between null and undefined is that undefined can also mean something which has not been assigned to.

                            undefined   false
(SomeObject.foo)            false        false
(SomeObject.foo != null)    false        true
(SomeObject.foo !== null)   true         true
(SomeObject.foo != false)   true         false
(SomeObject.foo !== false)  true         false

This is taken from this weblog

Answer 7

The problem is that you claim to see the difference, but you don't. Take your example. It should really be:

var List = []; // ordered list contains data at odd indexes.
var getObject = function(id) {
    for (var i = 1; i < List.length; i+=2) {
        if (id === List[i].getId()) {
            return List[i];
        }
    }
    // returns undefined by default
}

Your algorithm is flawed because you check even indexes (even though you know there's nothing there), and you also misuse null as a return value.

These kind of functions should really return undefined because it means: there's no such data

And there you are in the heart of the problem. If you don't fully understand null and undefined and may use them wrongly sometimes, how can you be so sure that others will use it correctly? You can't.

Then there are Host objects with their nasty behavior, if you ask me, you better off checking for both. It doesn't hurt, in fact, it saves you some headaches dealing with third party code, or the aformentioned non-native objects.

Except for these two cases, in your own code, you can do what @bobince said:

Keep undefined as a special value for signalling when other languages might throw an exception instead.

Answer 8

When to set/use them...

Note that a method without a return statement returns undefined, you shouldn't force this as an expected response, if you use it in a method that should always return a value, then it should represent an error state internally.

Use null for an intentional or non-match response.

---

As for how/when to check...

undefined, null, 0, an empty string, NaN and false will be FALSE via coercion. These are known as "falsy" values... everything else is true.

Your best bet is coercion then testing for valid exception values...

var something; //undefined

something = !!something; //something coerced into a boolean

//true if false, null, NaN or undefined
function isFalsish(value) {
  return (!value && value !== "" && value !== 0);
}

//get number or default
function getNumber(val, defaultVal) {
  defaultVal = isFalsish(defaultVal) ? 0 : defaultVal;
  return (isFalsish(val) || isNaN(val)) ? defaultVal : +val;
}

Numeric testing is the real bugger, since true, false and null can be coerced into a number, and 0 coerces to false.

Answer 9

I would treat them as 2 completely different values, and check for the one you know might occur.

If you're checking to see if something has been given a value yet, check against undefined.

If you're checking to see if the value is 'nothing,' check against 'null'

A slightly contrived example:

Say you have a series of ajax requests, and you're morally opposed to using callbacks so you have a timeout running that checks for their completion.

Your check would look something like this:

if (result !== undefined){
    //The ajax requests have completed
    doOnCompleteStuff();
    if (result !== null){
        //There is actually data to process
        doSomething(result);
    }
}

tldr; They are two different values, undefined means no value has been given, null means a value has been given, but the value is 'nothing'.