What do you do with unused code in your legacy applications? [closed]

Question

On huge legacy applications it is fairly common to see change in business rules leading to unused code. Is the deleting the best way? or Are there any standards of marking the unused code? SCM does help to get the old code back if needed. Also this is specific to .NET code bases.

Answer 1

1. Check old project into Source Control.
2. Delete unused code.
3. Profit!!

Answer 2

1. Mark it obsolete. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa664623%28VS.71%29.aspx
2. Next cycle, comment the code out & make appropriate remarks. Set a region around the code block so that it collapses nicely & doesn't eat up a lot of visual space.
3. Next cycle, delete the code.

This way you don't surprise your teammates too badly if you need to deprecate some code that you're assigned to but which they need to make calls to. But allows you to make those needed changes!