I had some chaining that was getting too complex due to many nil checks, so I started to refactor using a Null Object.

However, I���m struggling a bit with the refactor due to inlining. Since #ifNil: variants might be inlined, it seems that something like:

anObject with a long chain of messages ifNotNil: [ :result | ��������� ]

must be changed into something like:

anObject with a long chain of messages isNil ifFalse: [ anObject with a long chain of messages ��������� ].

Obviously, I can use a temp to have:

result := anObject with a long chain of messages.

result isNil ifFalse: [ result ��������� ].

But both seem ugly and make me question using this pattern.

1. What am I missing?

2. After 40+ years of Moore���s Law, can we turn off these inlines by default?