Optional Chaining

The ?. operator short-circuits to null instead of raising when the thing you're accessing is null.

Basic usage

let user = null
show user?.email   # null — no error

let user = {"name": "Sam", "email": "s@example.com"}
show user?.email   # "s@example.com" — behaves like a normal access when not null

Method calls

let name = null
show name?.upper()   # null

let name2 = "sam"
show name2?.upper()  # "SAM"

Chaining through multiple links

let user = null
show user?.profile?.email   # null — short-circuits at the first null link

Only the explicit ?. short-circuits

A plain . after a null result still raises — only the ?. you actually write protects that specific link:

let user = null
show user?.profile.email

This raises, because user?.profile evaluates to null, and .email (a plain dot, not ?.) on null is not protected. If you want the whole chain to be safe, use ?. at every link that might be null.

What ?. does not do

?. only checks whether the object itself is null. It doesn't suppress other kinds of errors — accessing a genuinely missing key on a dict that isn't null still raises normally, listing the keys that were actually available.