To attack a man, you'd look for the npc object, then interact with it.
 
But there's a chance methods such as "closest" will return null, resulting in an NPE. So you do a null check:

NPC man = getNPCs().closest("Man");
if(man != null)
    man.interact("Attack");

Scripters are basically saying "if man is null, do nothing". This null check does not have any real purpose, other than ensuring you don't trigger an NPE.
 
Scripters should be able to simply do

getNPCs().closest("Man").interact("Attack");

If there is no man, closest should return a Null Object which has the behavior of "doing nothing". You would still be able to call the interact method, it'll just do nothing.
 
Now let's say for some reason you wanted to actually check if closest found an NPC. Rather than interact with the npc, you want to just make sure there's one around you or something. The exists method could simply account for this check.
 
The point is, I see scripts with excessive amount of null checks. People do null checks "just to be safe", which leads to cluttery code. This should not be the case. Do not use null.
 
I believe this will simplify scripting for new people. Null is a trap.

It's a trap by not using it since scripters would just refuse to check if the target exists and proceed to blame OSBot for their script not working. By doing it this way, it's painfully obvious what the problem is.

It's a trap by not using it since scripters would just refuse to check if the target exists and proceed to blame OSBot for their script not working. By doing it this way, it's painfully obvious what the problem is.

They wouldn't need to check if it exists. It would simply be an option.

The idea is that scripters do null checks only to prevent NPE. They do not execute code if the value is actually null (through an else); do nothing on null.

Doing something like

npcs().closest("Man').interact(...)

Requires a null check, when it could just be how I wrote it above (without the check). The null check isn't needed unless you actually wanted to do something in the case that null was returned. If null was returned, the scripter wouldn't do anything, and allow the loop to keep going until it's not null.

Edited October 9, 201510 yr by fixthissite

They wouldn't need to check if it exists. It would simply be an option.

The idea is that scripters do null checks only to prevent NPE. They do not execute code if the value is actually null (through an else); do nothing on null.

Doing something like

npcs().closest("Man').interact(...)

Requires a null check, when it could just be how I wrote it above (without the check). The null check isn't needed unless you actually wanted to do something in the case that null was returned. If null was returned, the scripter wouldn't do anything, and allow the loop to keep going until it's not null.

 

Except in virtually all cases, scripters choose to delay doing anything for around a second. If they had a check, that delay would be pretty much non-existent.

Regardless of whether it's a null check or an empty object check, there should be an if-statement there. Returning null simply makes it more obvious.

Except in virtually all cases, scripters choose to delay doing anything for around a second. If they had a check, that delay would be pretty much non-existent.

Regardless of whether it's a null check or an empty object check, there should be an if-statement there. Returning null simply makes it more obvious.

Why should there be an if statement there? That's what this suggestion is attempting to remove. It's not needed, since in the case of null, nothing is executed (most of the time)

If a person wanted to log that the entity doesn't exist, they could optionally perform a check similar to a null check (via the exists method), but it should only be optional, not forced

Edited October 9, 201510 yr by fixthissite

Why should there be an if statement there? That's what this suggestion is attempting to remove. It's not needed. In the case of null, nothing is executed.

If a person wanted to log that the entity doesn't exist, they could optionally perform a check similar to a null check (via the exists method), but it should only be optional, not forced

 

It is if you want a decent script. Otherwise, your script doesn't even know what it's doing until seconds after the fact. Forcing a null return only makes that more obvious to find and fix. It's staying as null.