Elvis operator for explicit nulls

[NthPortal]

To quote an old and related thread:

@sjrd

Option is not a better way to deal with null ! It is a better way to deal with optional values. null itself is a poor way to deal with optional values. It is not type parametric, as you cannot represent an optional value of a type that can itself hold null .

Perhaps we ought to have an unboxed Option in the stdlib to avoid allocation costs over using null, but I agree that we should NOT encourage the use of null by adding such an operator. However, it might be worth adding such an operator for Option or an unboxed version of Option.

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Additionally, I think it’s worth noting that the elvis operator with null is a bit inconsistent as well. When being used with null, it doesn’t distinguish between its RHS being nullable or not—that is, it represents the operations equivalent to both orElse and getOrElse on Option. I think that it is both trivial and valuable to separate those two cases into different symbols (e.g. :? and one of ::? or :??)