[routerLink]="null" should not affect the href attribute

I’m submitting a…

[ ] Regression (a behavior that used to work and stopped working in a new release)
[ ] Bug report  
[ ] Performance issue
[x] Feature request
[ ] Documentation issue or request
[ ] Support request => Please do not submit support request here, instead see https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#question
[ ] Other... Please describe:

Current behavior

the following template: <a href="my/custom/url" [routerLink]="null">link</a> is generated to: <a href="current/page/url">link</a>

Expected behavior

the following template: <a href="my/custom/url" [routerLink]="null">link</a> should be generated to: <a href="my/custom/url">link</a>

Minimal reproduction of the problem with instructions

https://stackblitz.com/edit/angular-gitter-63xra2?file=app%2Fapp.component.html

What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?

In case you have an array of links to handle, and the array includes links with ‘routerLink routes’ and ‘normal (pl absolute-) URLs’. Then it’s much easier to handle them in a template (see: reproduction example)

Environment

Angular version: 6.1.7

[jasonaden]

Thanks for the issue. This seems quite specific, so I set the frequency to low, but at the same time it’s definitely broken. I don’t think it’s a feature request, but actually a bug.

I don’t know when this one can get scheduled. I’m putting on the community-help label to see if someone can help grab this and get it fixed.

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