Why does .NET foreach loop throw NullRefException when collection is null?

Question

Well, the short answer is "because that's the way the compiler designers designed it." Realistically, though, your collection object is null, so there's no way for the compiler to get the enumerator to loop through the collection.

If you really need to do something like this, try the null coalescing operator:

int[] array = null;

foreach (int i in array ?? Enumerable.Empty<int>())
{
   System.Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}", i));
}

A foreach loop calls the GetEnumerator method.
If the collection is null, this method call results in a NullReferenceException.

It is bad practice to return a null collection; your methods should return an empty collection instead.

There is a big difference between an empty collection and a null reference to a collection.

When you use foreach, internally, this is calling the IEnumerable's GetEnumerator() method. When the reference is null, this will raise this exception.

However, it is perfectly valid to have an empty IEnumerable or IEnumerable<T>. In this case, foreach will not "iterate" over anything (since the collection is empty), but it will also not throw, since this is a perfectly valid scenario.

---

Edit:

Personally, if you need to work around this, I'd recommend an extension method:

public static IEnumerable<T> AsNotNull<T>(this IEnumerable<T> original)
{
     return original ?? Enumerable.Empty<T>();
}

You can then just call:

foreach (int i in returnArray.AsNotNull())
{
    // do some more stuff
}

It is being answer long back but i have tried to do this in the following way to just avoid null pointer exception and may be useful for someone using C# null check operator ?.

     //fragments is a list which can be null
     fragments?.ForEach((obj) =>
        {
            //do something with obj
        });

Another extension method to work around this:

public static void ForEach<T>(this IEnumerable<T> items, Action<T> action)
{
    if(items == null) return;
    foreach (var item in items) action(item);
}

Consume in several ways:

(1) with a method that accepts T:

returnArray.ForEach(Console.WriteLine);

(2) with an expression:

returnArray.ForEach(i => UpdateStatus(string.Format("{0}% complete", i)));

(3) with a multiline anonymous method

int toCompare = 10;
returnArray.ForEach(i =>
{
    var thisInt = i;
    var next = i++;
    if(next > 10) Console.WriteLine("Match: {0}", i);
});

Just write an extension method to help you out:

public static class Extensions
{
   public static void ForEachWithNull<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, Action<T> action)
   {
      if(source == null)
      {
         return;
      }

      foreach(var item in source)
      {
         action(item);
      }
   }
}

Because a null collection is not the same thing as an empty collection. An empty collection is a collection object with no elements; a null collection is a nonexistent object.

Here's something to try: Declare two collections of any sort. Initialize one normally so that it's empty, and assign the other the value null. Then try adding an object to both collections and see what happens.