<p>Is there a one statement or one line way to accomplish something like this, where the string s is declared AND assigned the first non-null value in the expression?</p>

<pre><code>//pseudo-codeish
string s = Coalesce(string1, string2, string3);
</code></pre>

<p>or, more generally,</p>

<pre><code>object obj = Coalesce(obj1, obj2, obj3, ...objx);
</code></pre>

the
??
operator.
```
```
string a = nullstring ?? "empty!";
```
```