Robert McNeel

Why does VBScript have Null, Nothing and Empty, and what are the differences between them?
When you declare a variable in VBScript, the variable’s value before the first assignment is undefined, or Empty.

Dim varValue ‘ Empty value

So basically, Empty says I am an uninitialized variant. If you need to detect whether a variable actually is an empty variant and not a string or a number, you can use IsEmpty. Alternatively, you could use TypeName or VarType, but I prefer IsEmpty.
Nothing is similar to Empty but subtly different. Empty says I am an uninitialized variant, Nothing says I am an object reference that refers to no object. Objects are assigned to variables using the Set statement. Since the equality operator on objects checks for equality on the default property of an object, any attempt to say:

If varValue = Nothing Then

is doomed to failure – Nothing does not have a default property, so this will produce a run-time error. To check to see if an object reference is invalid, use:

If varValue Is Nothing Then

Null is more obscure. The semantics of Null are very poorly understood, particularly amongst people who have little experience with programming. Empty says I’m an uninitialized variant, Nothing says I’m an invalid object and Null says I represent a value which is not known. Null is not True, not False, but Null! The correct way to check for Null is much as you’d do for Empty: use IsNull (or TypeName or VarType.)

One thought on “Robert McNeel

  1. shinichi Post author

    Nothing vs Empty vs Null

    McNeel Wiki

    http://wiki.mcneel.com/homepage

    There has always been confusion about the semantics of data that are not even there. Usually they’ve written code something like:

    If varValue = Nothing Then

    or

    If varValue = Empty Then

    or

    If varValue = Null Then

    Reply

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