本例中的问题不在于数据为空。那就是dataList本身是空的。

在声明dataList的地方，应该创建一个新的List对象并将其赋值给变量。

List<object> dataList = new List<object>();

正如其他人已经指出的那样，它不是data，而是dataList是null。除此之外……

catch-throw is an antipattern that almost always makes me want to throw up every time that I see it. Imagine that something goes wrong deep in something that doOtherStuff() calls. All you get back is an Exception object, thrown at the throw in AddData(). No stack trace, no call information, no state, nothing at all to indicate the real source of the problem, unless you go in and switch your debugger to break on exception thrown rather than exception unhandled. If you are catching an exception and just re-throwing it in any way, particularly if the code in the try block is in any way nontrivial, do yourself (and your colleagues, present and future) a favor and throw out the entire try-catch block. Granted, throw; is better than the alternatives, but you are still giving yourself (or whoever else is trying to fix a bug in the code) completely unnecessary headaches. This is not to say that try-catch-throw is necessarily evil per se, as long as you do something relevant with the exception object that was thrown inside the catch block.

然后，首先就存在捕获Exception的潜在问题，但这是另一回事，特别是因为在这种特殊情况下，您抛出了一个异常。

另一件让我感到非常危险的事情是，数据可能在函数执行期间更改值，因为您是通过引用传递的。因此，null检查可能会通过，但在代码对值进行任何操作之前，它已经被更改了——可能是null。我不确定这是否值得关注(可能不是)，但这似乎值得关注。

我只是遵循了我们通常在java脚本中遵循的方法。将对象转换为字符串，然后检查它们是否为空。

var obj = new Object();
var objStr = obj.ToString();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(objStr)){
  // code as per your needs
}

你的dataList是空的，因为它还没有被实例化，从你发布的代码判断。

Try:

    public List<Object> dataList = new List<Object>();
    public  bool AddData(ref Object data)
    bool success = false;
    try
    {
        if (!data.Equals(null))   // I've also used if(data != null) which hasn't worked either
        {
           dataList.Add(data);                      //NullReferenceException occurs here
           success = doOtherStuff(data);
        }
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        throw;
    }
    return success;
}

使用c#9(2020)，您现在可以使用以下代码检查参数为空:

if (name is null) { }

if (name is not null) { }

你可以在这里获得更多信息

在c# >中使用if (obj是null)

非空用: c# 7-8: if (obj是对象) c# 9: if (obj不为空)

它们将忽略由对象定义的任何==或!=(当然，除非您想将它们用于空检查)

欲了解更多，请参阅c#语言参考，见is运算符。