Java String initialization (part 2)

Question

I asked this goofy question earlier today and got good answers. I think what I really meant to ask is the following:

String aString = ""; // Or = null ?
if(someCondition)
   aString = "something";

return aString;

In this case, the string has to be initialized in order to return it. I always thought that either option (setting it to "" or to null looks kind of ugly. I was just wondering what others do here...or is it more of just a matter of whether you want empty string or null being passed around in your program (and if you are prepared to handle either)?

Also assume that the intermediary logic is too long to cleanly use the conditional (? :) operator.

Answer 1

depends on what you want to achieve,

in general i would return null to signal that nothing was processed, it might later pop up cases where someCondition is true but the string you build together is "" anyway, that way you can differentiate from that case if you return null if nothing was processed.

i.e.

String aString = null;
if(someCondition)
  aString = "something";

return aString;

but it all really depends on what you want to achieve... e.g. if the code is suppose to build together a string that is delivered directly in the UI you would go for "" instead