TypeScript Nullable types

Nullable types

TypeScript has two special types, null and undefined, that have the values null and undefined respectively. We mentioned these briefly in the Basic Types section. By default, the type checker considers null and undefined assignable to anything. Effectively, null and undefined are valid values of every type. That means it’s not possible to stop them from being assigned to any type, even when you would like to prevent it. The inventor of null, Tony Hoare, calls this his “billion dollar mistake”.

The --strictNullChecks flag fixes this: when you declare a variable, it doesn’t automatically include null or undefined. You can include them explicitly using a union type:

let s = "foo";
s = null; // error, 'null' is not assignable to 'string'
let sn: string | null = "bar";
sn = null; // ok

sn = undefined; // error, 'undefined' is not assignable to 'string | null'

Type guards and type assertions

function f(sn: string | null): string {
    return sn || "default";
}

In cases where the compiler can’t eliminate null or undefined, you can use the type assertion operator to manually remove them. The syntax is postfix !: identifier! removes null and undefined from the type of identifier:

function broken(name: string | null): string {
  function postfix(epithet: string) {
    return name.charAt(0) + '.  the ' + epithet; // error, 'name' is possibly null
  }
  name = name || "Bob";
  return postfix("great");
}

function fixed(name: string | null): string {
  function postfix(epithet: string) {
    return name!.charAt(0) + '.  the ' + epithet; // ok
  }
  name = name || "Bob";
  return postfix("great");
}