Our website uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience.
Accept
to the top
close form

Fill out the form in 2 simple steps below:

Your contact information:

Step 1
Congratulations! This is your promo code!

Desired license type:

Step 2
Team license
Enterprise license
** By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement
close form
Request our prices
New License
License Renewal
--Select currency--
USD
EUR
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
Free PVS‑Studio license for Microsoft MVP specialists
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
To get the licence for your open-source project, please fill out this form
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
I am interested to try it on the platforms:
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
check circle
Message submitted.

Your message has been sent. We will email you at


If you do not see the email in your inbox, please check if it is filtered to one of the following folders:

  • Promotion
  • Updates
  • Spam

Webinar: Evaluation - 05.12

>
>
>
V3123. Perhaps the '??' operator works …
menu mobile close menu
Analyzer diagnostics
General Analysis (C++)
General Analysis (C#)
General Analysis (Java)
Micro-Optimizations (C++)
Diagnosis of 64-bit errors (Viva64, C++)
Customer specific requests (C++)
MISRA errors
AUTOSAR errors
OWASP errors (C++)
OWASP errors (C#)
Problems related to code analyzer
Additional information
toggle menu Contents

V3123. Perhaps the '??' operator works in a different way than it was expected. Its priority is lower than priority of other operators in its left part.

Dec 12 2016

The analyzer detected a code fragment that is very likely to contain a logic error. The code uses an expression with the operator '??' or '?:' that may be evaluated differently from what the programmer intended.

The '??' and '?:' operators have lower precedence than the operators ||, &&, |, ^, &, !=, ==, +, -, %, /, *. Programmers sometimes forget about this and write faulty code like in the following example:

public bool Equals(Edit<TNode> other)
{
    return _kind == other._kind
        && (_node == null) ? other._node == null :
                             node.Equals(other._node);
}

Since the '&&' operator's precedence is higher than that of '?:', the '_kind == other._kind && (_node == null)' expression will be evaluated in the first place. To avoid errors like that, make sure to enclose the whole expression with the '?:' operator in parentheses:

public bool Equals(Edit<TNode> other)
{
    return _kind == other._kind
        && ((_node == null) ? other._node == null :
                              node.Equals(other._node));
}

The next example of incorrect code uses the '??' operator:

public override int GetHashCode()
{
    return ValueTypes.Aggregate(...)
         ^ IndexMap?.Aggregate(...) ?? 0;
}

The '^' operator's precedence is higher than that of '??', so if 'IndexMap' is found to be null, the left operand of the '??' operator will also have the value of "null", which means that the function will always return 0 regardless of the contents of the 'ValueTypes' collection.

Like in the case with the '?:' operator, it is recommended that you enclose expressions with the '??' operator in parentheses:

public override int GetHashCode()
{
    return ValueTypes.Aggregate(...)
         ^ (IndexMap?.Aggregate(...) ?? 0);
}

From now on, the 'GetHashCode()' function will return different values depending on the contents of the 'ValueTypes' collection even when 'IndexMap' is equal to 'null'.

This diagnostic is classified as:

You can look at examples of errors detected by the V3123 diagnostic.