Is the #region directive really useful in .NET?

Question

After maintaining lots of code littered with #region (in both C# and VB.NET), it seems to me that this construct is just a bunch of "make work" for the programmer. It's work to PUT the dang things into the code, and then they make searching and reading code very annoying.

What are the benefits? Why do coders go to the extra trouble to put this in their code.

Make me a believer!

Answer 1

A similar question has already been asked.

but...

I would say not anymore. It was originally intended to hide generated code from WinForms in early versions of .NET. With partial classes the need seems to go away. IMHO it gets way overused now as an organizational construct and has no compiler value whatsoever. It's all for the IDE.

Answer 2

Often times, both partials and #regions are used as a crutch for bad design (e.g. class is too big or tries to do too many things).

The best use I've had for #regions so far is the grouping of functionality that is seen in many different classes. For example, value objects that have getters, setters, constructors and supporting fields. I might very well group those ideas into regions. Its a matter of opinion, however, as to whether that makes code cleaner or harder to read.

Answer 3

http://www.rauchy.net/regionerate/ - Automatically regionised your code ;)

I'm a fan of regions for grouping sections of large classes, say all the properties together, all constances, etc. I'm someone who's constantly collapsing code I don't need to see at that time so I love regions for that.

Also I find regions really useful when implementing interfaces, particularly multiple interfaces. I can group each interfaces methods, properties, events, etc so it's easier at a glance to see what method belongs to what interface.