I'm having a bit of a brain freeze with `firstOrNull` and a function that could return a nullable st...

# getting-started

[v79]

I'm having a bit of a brain freeze with firstOrNull and a function that could return a nullable string. It's always returning an empty string when I'd rather it return a null:

private fun KSAnnotation.getArgumentValue(name: String): String? {
        // I want to return null if the argument is not found, otherwise return the value as a string
        return this.arguments.firstOrNull { it.name?.asString() == name }?.value?.toString() ?: null
    }

Intellij tells me that the ?: null is useless. But I really would like to return null and not an empty string.

[Tolriq]

?: use the right part only if it's null, so you are writing if it's null return null. So as IJ says it's useless.

[v79]

My brain has unfrozen. I had default values of empty strings so even when no value was supplied, they were empty strings not null.

[Wout Werkman]

If you want to handle the empty case, you can write .ifEmpty { null }