I was having trouble using the VB.NET IIF() feature today, it was not behaving the way that I expected it would in that it was still evaluating both results no matter whether or not the expression was returning True or False.

I had expected it to work like Ternary Operators in JavaScript; the first expression would be evaluated and then depending on the True or False result a different value would be returned. For example, in the operation below the value 5 would be returned because the expression would return true.

var myVar =  true;
var mySecondVar = myVar ? 5 : 10;

This, however, is not the case in VB.NET. After reading this article by Leon Bambrick, the truth began to reveal itself. It the article, Leon explains that in VB.NET IIF() is a function rather than a feature of the language. Therefore, each of the parameters for the function are evaluated before the function is executed, making IIF() thoroughly useless for evaluating anything but already defined values.

For example, I was trying to use IIF() to check if there was a logged in user, and to return different values accordingly:

Dim Username As String = IIF(Membership.GetUser.Email Is Nothing, "", Membership.GetUser.Email)

This of course was producing an "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error, because even though Membership.GetUser.Email was nothing, the IIF() function needed to execute Membership.GetUser.Email before the IIF() comparison could be run, because it is the FalsePart parameter of the function.

Basically, if you are ever doing something like this it is better to use the long way instead of using IIF, like so:

Dim Username As String = String.Empty
If Membership.GetUser.Email Is Nothing Then
    Username = ""
Else
    Username = Membership.GetUser.Email
End If

And you shouldn’t have any more issues!

NOTE: C# does not have this issue, as it uses the same Ternary Operator syntax as JavaScript i.e.

var a = (c == 0) ? 0 : (b/c);