Use nullable or undefineable as object type?

Question

This come with a debate with my colleague that I'm using nullable object type.

  type Value = Node | null
  const [v0, setV0] = React.useState<Value>(null)
  const [v1, setV1] = React.useState<Value>(null)

  const snapshot = (nodes: Node[]) => {
    const root = Parser.parse(nodes)
    if (v0 === null) {
      setV0(root)
    } else if (v1 === null) {
      setV1(root)
    } else {
      setV0(v1)
      setV1(root)
    }
    alert("current version saved!")
  }

He's suggestion is change it to undefinable object type. type Value = Node | undefined since null is a mistake

My understanding with undefined type in JS is a preserve type for item not found. ie,

object['not exist'] === undefined
array[-1] === undefined

With his suggestion we cannot distinguish if

type object = { [key: string]: Value }
object['not exist'] === undefined
const a: Value = object['not exist']

Also many libraries like lodash treat undefined and null differently. So I'm worried if this can cause problems later on.

Answer 1

Undefined usually signifies that a property does not exist at all. For example, as you showed, attempting to access a missing property yields undefined. This is because the property itself does not exist; it is not valid.

Null on the other hand signifies that a property exists, but has no value. If it is legal within your program for a value to be optionally present (which appears to be the case in your specific example), then go with null since that better communicates that the property exists but is empty.