PHP 8 introduced the nullsafe operator (?->
), which is simply another name for the safe navigation operator. It evaluates an expression from left-to-right; when/if the left-hand side of the operator evaluates to null
, it stops the execution of the entire chain and short-circuit evaluates the expression to null
. This helps avoid having the need to add sequential explicit null-safe checks.
You can use the nullsafe operator to call object methods or access object properties within an execution chain where an object in the chain can potentially be null
. It has the following syntax:
$obj->val?->prop $obj->val?->method()
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