Resolved string.Length and/or stringbuilder.Length always returning 0

Hey there,

I'm currently stuck on something I can't wrap my head around, would someone be able to explain why this debug.Log returns 0 as a value, throwing a nullreference directly after.

Code (CSharp):

1. string test = "";
2.         for (int i = 0; i < names.lastNames.Count; i++)
3.         {
4.             if (names.lastNames[i].lastName.prefix != "") //if the prefix is not empty
5.             {
6.                 test += names.lastNames[i].lastName.prefix; //add it
7.  
8.                 Debug.Log(test.Length); // Returns 0 ?
9.                 if (test[test.Length - 1] == ' ') // Throws nullreference
10. ......

The same happens when trying to do this with stringbuilder.Append, stringbuilder.Length returns 0 and nullreference on the stringbuilder.Length when trying to check it.

 

What happens if you print out the value of "names.lastNames.lastName.prefix"?

 

Well thanks appearently that threw a null. I was convinced that prefix was always either "" or some actual string, turns out it was able to be null as well.