How to do ToString for a possibly null object?

Is there a simple way of doing the following:

String s = myObj == null ? "" : myObj.ToString();

I know I can do the following, but I really consider it as a hack:

String s = "" + myObj;

It would be great if Convert.ToString() had a proper overload for this.

C# 6.0 Edit:

With C# 6.0 we can now have a succinct, cast-free version of the orignal method:

string s = myObj?.ToString() ?? "";

Or even using interpolation:

string s = $"{myObj}";

Original Answer:

string s = (myObj ?? String.Empty).ToString();

or

string s = (myObjc ?? "").ToString()

to be even more concise.

Unfortunately, as has been pointed out you'll often need a cast on either side to make this work with non String or Object types:

string s = (myObjc ?? (Object)"").ToString()
string s = ((Object)myObjc ?? "").ToString()

Therefore, while it maybe appears elegant, the cast is almost always necessary and is not that succinct in practice.

As suggested elsewhere, I recommend maybe using an extension method to make this cleaner:

public static string ToStringNullSafe(this object value)
{
    return (value ?? string.Empty).ToString();
}

string.Format("{0}", myObj);

string.Format will format null as an empty string and call ToString() on non-null objects. As I understand it, this is what you were looking for.

It would be great if Convert.ToString() had a proper overload for this.

There's been a Convert.ToString(Object value) since .Net 2.0 (approx. 5 years before this Q was asked), which appears to do exactly what you want:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/astxcyeh(v=vs.80).aspx

Am I missing/misinterpreting something really obvious here?

With an extension method, you can accomplish this:

public static class Extension
{
    public static string ToStringOrEmpty(this Object value)
    {
        return value == null ? "" : value.ToString();
    }
}

The following would write nothing to the screen and would not thrown an exception:

        string value = null;

        Console.WriteLine(value.ToStringOrEmpty());

I disagree with that this:

String s = myObj == null ? "" : myObj.ToString();

is a hack in any way. I think it's a good example of clear code. It's absolutely obvious what you want to achieve and that you're expecting null.

UPDATE:

I see now that you were not saying that this was a hack. But it's implied in the question that you think this way is not the way to go. In my mind it's definitely the clearest solution.