title: Can an ASP.NET HttpRequest ever be null? How about CurrentExecutionFilePath?
body: <p>We're getting an odd bug in a production server.  We have a stack trace, but no line numbers, so I know the method where the bug is, but not the exact line.  It's complaining of a "Object reference not set to an instance of an object."  Something is null.</p>
  
  <p>After looking at the code, the only two potential culprits that I can see are the two consecutive lines that read: </p>
  
  <pre><code>string currentPath = this.Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath;
  string[] parts = currentPath.Split('/');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which would throw if Request was null, or if the CurrentExecutionFilePath of the Request was null.  I'm not really clear on when (or even if) this can happen.  Am I barking up the wrong tree here?  (This code seems to be running during the Load portion of the page lifecycle).</p>