C# Null Coalescing Operator – What Does Coalescing Mean in ?? Null Coalescing Operator?

It's the null coalescing operator, and quite like the ternary (immediate-if) operator. See also ?? Operator - MSDN.

FormsAuth = formsAuth ?? new FormsAuthenticationWrapper();

expands to:

FormsAuth = formsAuth != null ? formsAuth : new FormsAuthenticationWrapper();

which further expands to:

if(formsAuth != null)
    FormsAuth = formsAuth;
else
    FormsAuth = new FormsAuthenticationWrapper();

In English, it means "If whatever is to the left is not null, use that, otherwise use what's to the right."

Note that you can use any number of these in sequence. The following statement will assign the first non-null Answer# to Answer (if all Answers are null then the Answer is null):

string Answer = Answer1 ?? Answer2 ?? Answer3 ?? Answer4;

Also it's worth mentioning while the expansion above is conceptually equivalent, the result of each expression is only evaluated once. This is important if for example an expression is a method call with side effects. (Credit to @Joey for pointing this out.)

(This answer was constructed from my comments above.)

Are you sure the debugger dsiplays this correctly to you? Have you tried stepping some lines further down to make sure you have the updated value of amount3?

I'm sure it's just an issue with the debugger. Sometimes you have to step a little further. Maybe the translated code (IL) has some optimizations that confuse the debugger (or what would I know). But without the debugger, the value will be updated exactly when you expect it.

I've seen other experienced developers being confused by similar situations, so I know the debugger sometimes is "one line of code" behind when looking at an assignment to a local variable. Maybe someone can find a link discussing that?