The C# syntax tree's name accessors (ParameterDeclaration.Name, GotoStatement.Label,
catch variable, query continuations, ...) are convenience strings over a backing Identifier
token. Names that may be absent are now typed string? and read as null when absent, instead of
a non-null empty-string sentinel; required names stay non-null string. The backing token slot's
nullability follows, and an empty or null assignment clears the token (empty == absent).
Because the property type now carries optionality, the separate [NameSlot] attribute and its
nullOnEmpty flag are redundant: a [Slot] on a string property is a name (child slots are
AstNode-typed, so the type disambiguates), and the generator infers optionality from the
declared nullable annotation -- which a string? declaration already requires #nullable for. The
repeated empty-to-null setter body becomes Identifier.CreateIfNotEmpty. To make the annotation
readable, #nullable enable is turned on across the syntax node files (the directive the inferred
optionality depends on), with the attendant local nullability fixups. Consumers that feed a name
into a non-null slot assert it where the variable structurally has a name.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8:Claude Code
Turn on #nullable enable across the AST consumer layer: the output visitor, the
IL-to-C# builders (statement, call and expression builders, CSharpDecompiler,
TypeSystemAstBuilder), the translation-result wrappers, the sequence-point and
required-namespace collectors, and the annotation helpers. Optional inputs,
fields and returns are typed nullable, detector out-parameters use
[NotNullWhen(true)], and structurally-guaranteed dereferences use the
null-forgiving operator. A few public parameters that already tolerate null are
widened to match their downstream callers. The annotations emit no IL, so the
Pretty suite stays byte-identical.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8:Claude Code
With every optional slot nullable, the null-object pattern is dead. Generated
non-nullable getters return the backing field directly, which surfaced a last
tier of slots the decompiler legitimately leaves empty (omitted range operands,
an implicitly-typed array creation, unnamed parameters, an unbound generic
argument, and others) and flips them to nullable too. The machinery is then
removed entirely: the per-node null classes, the .Null statics and
VisitNullNode, AstNode.IsNull, the role null object, and Identifier.Null.
AcceptVisitor becomes unconditionally generated, and consumers move from
.IsNull to is null and from unconditional visits to ?.AcceptVisitor.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8:Claude Code
Optional single-child slots return T? with a real null instead of a role
null-object, taking the C# grammar as the oracle for which slots are optional.
The generator emits the property type as T? and matches it with MatchOptional,
and consumers move from .IsNull to is null / ?.. This covers the optional
statement, member, try-catch, creation-initializer and pattern slots and the
optional NameSlot tokens. A few slots the grammar marks required but the
decompiler legitimately leaves empty (the implicit-element-access target, an
implicitly-typed lambda parameter's type) are flipped to nullable as well.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8:Claude Code
Comments and preprocessor directives were positional children interleaved
into the child list, and punctuation, keywords and operators were token-node
children. Add a leading/trailing trivia side-channel for comments and
directives, emit it from the output visitor, and re-home every comment
receiver onto it (including inside-block comments as comment-only empty
statements and undecodable attribute arguments as an ErrorExpression). With
locations and sequence points no longer sourced from token nodes, stop
reconstructing them on the locations path and delete CSharpTokenNode,
CSharpModifierToken and InsertSpecialsDecorator. The AST no longer carries
token children or positional comments; output is byte-identical.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8:Claude Code