Null argument to Equals(object)¶
ID: cs/null-argument-to-equals
Kind: problem
Security severity:
Severity: warning
Precision: high
Tags:
- quality
- reliability
- correctness
Query suites:
- csharp-security-and-quality.qls
Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository
It is common to want to check an object against null, but this should not be done using the Equals method. If the object really is null, a NullReferenceException is thrown when attempting to call Equals, with unexpected results.
Recommendation¶
The offending call should be replaced with either == or ReferenceEquals (the difference being that == can be overridden but ReferenceEquals cannot).
Example¶
In the following example, IsNull will throw a NullReferenceException when o is null.
class Bad
{
bool IsNull(object o) => o.Equals(null);
}
In the revised example, IsNull will correctly return true when o is null.
class Good
{
bool IsNull(object o) => o == null;
}