Hidden Features of C#? [closed]

Question

This isn't C# per se, but I haven't seen anyone who really uses System.IO.Path.Combine() to the extent that they should. In fact, the whole Path class is really useful, but no one uses it!

I'm willing to bet that every production app has the following code, even though it shouldn't:

string path = dir + "\\" + fileName;

lambdas and type inference are underrated. Lambdas can have multiple statements and they double as a compatible delegate object automatically (just make sure the signature match) as in:

Console.CancelKeyPress +=
    (sender, e) => {
        Console.WriteLine("CTRL+C detected!\n");
        e.Cancel = true;
    };

Note that I don't have a new CancellationEventHandler nor do I have to specify types of sender and e, they're inferable from the event. Which is why this is less cumbersome to writing the whole delegate (blah blah) which also requires you to specify types of parameters.

Lambdas don't need to return anything and type inference is extremely powerful in context like this.

And BTW, you can always return Lambdas that make Lambdas in the functional programming sense. For example, here's a lambda that makes a lambda that handles a Button.Click event:

Func<int, int, EventHandler> makeHandler =
    (dx, dy) => (sender, e) => {
        var btn = (Button) sender;
        btn.Top += dy;
        btn.Left += dx;
    };

btnUp.Click += makeHandler(0, -1);
btnDown.Click += makeHandler(0, 1);
btnLeft.Click += makeHandler(-1, 0);
btnRight.Click += makeHandler(1, 0);

Note the chaining: (dx, dy) => (sender, e) =>

Now that's why I'm happy to have taken the functional programming class :-)

Other than the pointers in C, I think it's the other fundamental thing you should learn :-)

From Rick Strahl:

You can chain the ?? operator so that you can do a bunch of null comparisons.

string result = value1 ?? value2 ?? value3 ?? String.Empty;

Aliased generics:

using ASimpleName = Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, List<string>>>;

It allows you to use ASimpleName, instead of Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, List<string>>>.

Use it when you would use the same generic big long complex thing in a lot of places.

From CLR via C#:

When normalizing strings, it is highly recommended that you use ToUpperInvariant instead of ToLowerInvariant because Microsoft has optimized the code for performing uppercase comparisons.

I remember one time my coworker always changed strings to uppercase before comparing. I've always wondered why he does that because I feel it's more "natural" to convert to lowercase first. After reading the book now I know why.

My favorite trick is using the null coalesce operator and parentheses to automagically instantiate collections for me.

private IList<Foo> _foo;

public IList<Foo> ListOfFoo 
    { get { return _foo ?? (_foo = new List<Foo>()); } }