Method I Wish Was There: IEnumerable.IsNullOrEmpty

This one is a bit controversial because what I’m really saying is that I want to call an extension method on null and have it return true, rather than a Null Reference Exception. This violates the best practice of keeping null semantics on extension methods, but it makes my code so easy to write, so I don’t care, I wish it was there.

public static bool IsNullOrEmpty<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
{
  if(source ==null) return true;
  var collection = source as ICollection<T>;
  if (null != collection && collection.Count==0) return true;
  var enumerator = source.GetEnumerator();
  return enumerator.MoveNext();
}

I say that it makes my code writable because I can write what I’m thinking.

if (somedata.IsNullOrEmpty()) takeAction(); else takeOtherAction();