What is meant by safety when working with null values in programming?

Null safety in programming refers to preventing errors related to accessing objects that are equal to null. In languages that support null safety (such as Dart in Flutter), types can be explicitly declared as nullable or non-nullable.

This allows the compiler or development environment to warn or prohibit operations with null where they could lead to runtime errors, such as NullPointerException.

Example in Dart:

String? name; // can be null

void printName() {
  if (name != null) {
    print(name.length); // safe, as we checked for null
  }
}

Thus, null safety helps write more reliable and safe code, reducing the number of bugs related to null.