Null Is Not Nothing

in

blog

date

4/21/2024

Null is not nothing, it’s a value that represents the absence of a value. When developing a Terraform module it’s important to understand the difference between null¹ and other default values types for variables. Using null as the default value for optional variables is a good practice. This way, if the variable isn’t set, it won’t be passed down to a resource. This allows the resource provider to use its own default² value or omit it altogether, because it’s an optional³ variable. If omitted, it falls back to the API’s default value.

variable "example" {
  type    = string
  default = null
}

👟 Footnotes