Retrieving RectTransfrom from null reference possible???

[hexagonius]

I stumbled across a very strange behaviour. I received a reference to a RectTransform of an uninstantiated and therefore null gameobject.
I wanted to read the extends from a child RectTransform of a prefab without instantiation. The following code did that:

	public static Vector2 GenerateMeasureForMessage (ES_Message message){

		RectTransform messageRect = message.transform.GetChild (0).GetComponent<RectTransform> ();
		return messageRect.offsetMin - messageRect.offsetMax;
}

the following screenshot shows, that, since I use the “message” prefab directly, all its MonoBehaviour variables are still null.

The next screenshot however shows, that it was still possible for the code or Unity or… to retreive the reference

I stumbles across this, because I moved the code into another static variable, doing the exact same stuff, just relaying the work to another static method and THERE it threw the NullReferenceException.

The weird stuff does not happen in the class that holds the prefabs, it’s already a different class.

I don’t get how this works.

[Owen-Reynolds]

I think “uninstantiated and therefore null” is the problem. AFAIK, uninstantiated prefabs are real gameObjects, which just aren’t in the scene (and never will be.) You can examine them like anything else. As NoseK writes, the debugger looks to be wrong.

I remember it was even common to change parts of a prefab by mistake, with no harm done. Many Qs asked why a=Instantiate(b); b.thisAndThat=wasn’t changing their scene object a. No errors – just nothing happened. And I can print transform.position directly from my prefabs.

Sure, it’s a get, and not a variable, but I think the debugger calls it like normal – any funny unpacking prefab stuff should work either way. Maybe it’s not fully set-up(?) (but then why would it work in picture #2?) Maybe there’s also an issue specific to RectTransforms. Maybe.