[7/30/2015] This article was written against a pre-release version of C# 6.0. Be sure to check out the list of my five favorite C# 6.0 features for content written against the release!

Expression-bodied members are another set of features that simply add some syntactic convenience to C# to continue streamlining type definitions. C# type definitions have always been a bit tedious, requiring us to provide curly braces and explicit returns even when the function consists of only a single line. Lambda expressions have spoiled us by abstracting away most of the syntax that’s typically associated with functions and finally making delegation feel like a natural part of the language. Expression-bodied members extend the convenience of lambda expressions to type members… to an extent.

According to the Visual Studio “14” CTP3 notes, expression-bodied members can be used for methods, user-defined operators, type conversions, and read-only properties including indexers (although expression-bodied indexers don’t work properly in the CTP).

To demonstrate the feature, I’ll define a custom RgbColor class and using expression-bodied members for both a hexadecimal formatting method and a custom negation operator.

public class RgbColor(int r, int g, int b)
{
  public int Red { get; } = r;
  public int Green { get; } = g;
  public int Blue { get; } = b;

  public string ToHex() =>
    string.Format("#{0:X2}{1:X2}{2:X2}", Red, Green, Blue);

  public static RgbColor operator - (RgbColor color) =>
    new RgbColor(
      color.Red ^ 0xFF,
      color.Green ^ 0xFF,
      color.Blue ^ 0xFF
    );
}

As convenient as expression-bodied members appear on the surface, they seem rather limited in their utility since their very nature requires expressions. This fact is compounded by the fact that C# isn’t an expression-based language; if it were (as F# is) we could get away with defining more complex bodies including some intermediate values such as a regular expression match result. As it stands today it’s not possible to do this without first defining that logic in a separate method that can be invoked from the expression-bodied member but that seems to defeat the purpose. Perhaps this would be a good use for the semicolon operator since we can’t even include that logic within curly braces as we could with a lambda expression.

[7/30/2015] This article was written against a pre-release version of C# 6.0 and didn’t make it into the final product. Be sure to check out the list of my five favorite C# 6.0 features for content written against the release!

One of the items currently listed as “planned” on the Language Feature Implementation Status page is params IEnumerable. This is one of those features that I’ve thought could be nice but I’ve never really felt strongly about it one way or another mainly because I avoid params arrays whenever possible. I think the only time I actually use them consistently is with String.Format and its cousin methods. Before diving into the new feature, let’s revisit params arrays so I can better explain why I avoid them and why I’m so apathetic about this proposed feature.

The idea behind params arrays is that they let us pass an arbitrary number of arguments to a method by defining said method such that its final parameter is an array modified by the params keyword. When we invoke the function, the compiler implicitly creates an array from the final parameters and is then passed to the method. In the method body, we typically access those values through the array. The following function shows this in action:

string MyStringFormat(string format, params string[] tokens)
{
  return
    Regex.Replace(
      format,
      @"\{(?<index>\d+)\}",
      m => tokens[Int32.Parse(m.Groups["index"].Value)].ToString());
}

We could then invoke this function as follows:

var format = "[{0}] Hello, {1}.";
var time = DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString();
var name = "Guest";

var str = MyStringFormat(format, time, name);
// [10:35 PM] Hello, Guest.

Back in the early days of the .NET Framework, before we had collection initializers, the above was far more convenient than using an array directly. Now that collection initializers let us define arrays inline, we can simply write this:

var str = MyStringFormat(format, new [] { time, name });
// [10:35 PM] Hello, Guest.

Arguably, the former is a bit cleaner than the later because of the inline array definition but I have two problems with it. First, it masks the fact that an array is involved, and second, params arrays can really wreak havoc on overload resolution if you’re not careful with them. Assume we need to overload the MyStringFormat method to accept another string that will control some formatting options. We can’t tack the string on to the end of the parameter list because params arrays must appear last so we insert it at the front like this:

Note: I’m using string constants here for illustration purposes. A less contrived example would likely use an enum, thus avoiding the problem.

static class StringTransform
{
  public const string Uppercase = "Uppercase";
  public const string Lowercase = "Lowercase";
}

string MyStringFormat(string transformation, string format, params string[] tokens)
{
  var str = MyStringFormat(format, tokens);
  
  switch (transformation)
  {
    case StringTransform.Uppercase: return str.ToUpper();
    case StringTransform.Lowercase: return str.ToLower();
  }      

  return str;
}

Now we can invoke this new overload as follows:

var str = MyStringFormat(StringTransform.Uppercase, format, time, name);

…and the result would be as we would expect:

[12:30 AM] HELLO, GUEST.

But now that we have two overloads (each accepting an indeterminate number of strings) the compiler cannot always properly determine which overload to invoke. Let’s see what happens when we supply only three arguments as we did in the first example.

var str = MyStringFormat(format, time, name);

Now the result is:

12:30 AM

What happened? The compiler recognized that there are multiple candidate overloads so it took a greedy approach, selecting the overload with the most explicit parameters. As a result, each of the arguments were essentially shifted to the left of what we expected. In other words, what should have been the format parameter was treated as the transformation parameter, the first of the token values was treated as the format parameter, and so on. To force the compiler to use the correct overload, we can just be explicit with the array as we saw in the second example above:

var str = MyStringFormat(format, new [] { time, name });

So what does all of this have to do with params IEnumerable? Params IEnumerable is an extension of the core idea; rather than treating the last arguments as an array within the method, we’d treat them as a sequence. That is, in our MyStringFormat method, we’d define the final parameter as params IEnumerable<string> tokens rather than params string[] tokens.

This change makes sense from a language perspective especially since params arrays were implemented long before IEnumerable<T> was a central concept within the framework. But, as the May 21st design notes state, when the method is used as a params method (rather than by passing an explicit sequence), the compiler will still generate an array at the call site. For all other cases, passing a sequence will behave no differently than if the parameter had been defined without the params modifier.

Given that:

• it’s so easy to define sequences inline
• using params arrays can easily confuse the overload resolver
• params IEnumerable will only hide the sequence’s details from the method implementation but otherwise have no effect on the code

…I don’t see myself ever using this feature. I’ll likely continue designing methods to accept IEnumerable<T> without including the params modifier to avoid the problems and be more specific about what the method is expected to do.

I first read about the proposed semicolon operator a few weeks ago and, to be honest, I’m a bit surprised by the desire for it in C# if for no reason other than that C# isn’t an expression-based language. To me, this feature feels like another attempt to shoehorn functional approaches into an object-oriented language. If I understand the feature correctly, the idea is to allow variables to be defined within and scoped to an expression. The following snippet adapted from the language feature implementation status page shows the operator in action:

var result = (var x = Foo(); Write(x); x * x);

In this code, everything within the parentheses constitutes a single expression. The expression invokes Foo, assigns the result to x, passes x to the Write function, then returns the square of x, and ultimately assigns the square to result. Because x is scoped to the expression, it is not visible outside of the parenthesis. I think this seems a bit awkward in C# and what’s more, I don’t know what value it adds that functions don’t already give us. I haven’t really decided whether the above example is more readable or maintainable than if we’d defined a function called WriteAndSquare.

Interestingly, this capability already exists in F# (albeit in a slightly more verbose form) which isn’t really all that surprising since F# is an expression-based language.

let result =
  let x = Foo()
  printfn "%i" x
  x * x

Even in F# though, I think I’d still prefer factoring out the expression into a function.

[7/30/2015] This article was written against a pre-release version of C# 6.0 but is still relevant. Be sure to check out the list of my five favorite C# 6.0 features for content written against the release!

One of the most common complaints about C# (especially among the F# crowd) is the amount of code required to properly deal with null values. Consider the following type definitions and invocation chain:

Type Definitions

class PriceBreak(int min, int max, double price)
{
  public int MinQuantity { get; } = min;
  public int MaxQuantity { get; } = max;
  public double Price { get; } = price;
}

class Product(IList<PriceBreak> priceBreaks)
{
  public IList<PriceBreak> PriceBreaks { get; } = priceBreaks;
}

Invocation Chain

var minPrice = product.PriceBreaks[0].Price;

As it’s written the preceding invocation chain is full of problems (we’ll ignore the potential ArgumentOutOfRangeException for this discussion). In fact, it can throw a NullReferenceException when any of the following values are null:

• Product
• Product.PriceBreaks
• Product.PriceBreaks[0]

To properly avoid the exception we need to explicitly check for null. One possible approach would look like this:

double minPrice = 0;

if (product != null
    && product.PriceBreaks != null
    && product.PriceBreaks[0] != null)
{
  minPrice = product.PriceBreaks[0].Price;
}

Now we can be certain that we won’t encounter a NullReferenceException but we’ve greatly increased the complexity of the code. Rather than a single line, we have 5 that actually do something and of that, less than half are providing any value beyond making sure we don’t see an exception. C# 6.0’s null propagation operator (?) gives us the safety of checking for nulls while avoiding the verbose ceremony. The result is much cleaner and closely resembles the invocation chain shown earlier:

var minPrice = product?.PriceBreaks?[0]?.Price;

Introducing the null propagation operator allows us to chain each call while short-circuiting any nulls encountered along the way. In this case, the return type is double? (INullable) because anything preceding Price can be null. As such, we can either defer checking for null until we try to use the value or we can simply use the null coalescing operator with a default to coerce the type conversion as follows:

var minPrice = product?.PriceBreaks?[0]?.Price ?? 0;

One limitation of the null propagation operator is that it can’t work directly with delegate invocation. For instance, the following code is invalid:

var result = myDelegate?("someArgument");

Fortunately, there’s a workaround; rather than invoking the delegate directly as shown above, we can use invoke it via the Invoke method like this:

var result = myDelegate?.Invoke("someArgument");

The null propagation operator should eliminate a great deal of null reference checking code although I still believe F#’s approach of virtually eliminating null is superior. Honestly, my biggest concern about the null propagation operator is that it could encourage Law of Demeter violations but that’s a discussion for another day.

If you’ve been following along with my C# 6.0 features series or have otherwise wanted to experiment with some of the new language features, you may have noticed that they’re not enabled by default. Fortunately, Anthony Green included instructions on how to enable them in a post on the C# FAQ MSDN blog.

To summarize the instructions, the language features are experimental so they must be enabled by manually adding the following to your project file:

<LangVersion>experimental</LangVersion>

This element should be placed within the appropriate PropertyGroup element(s) for your project. Once you’ve added the element, reload the project and enjoy the new features!

[7/30/2015] This article was written against a pre-release version of C# 6.0. Be sure to check out the list of my five favorite C# 6.0 features for content written against the release!

I debated quite a bit with whether I’d write about C# 6.0’s exception filters because honestly, I was indifferent about them at first. What convinced me to include them in this blog series is that the language feature implementation status page lists the feature as done. After playing with the feature a bit, I have to admit that they’re actually pretty nice and do feel like a natural extension to the language as they’ve been implemented. As the CTP notes state, including exception filters with C# increases feature parity with VB and F# (although I still prefer F#’s exception pattern matching, of course).

Traditionally, whenever we’ve caught an exception we’ve had to handle it somehow or rethrow it. Rethrowing exceptions requires more overhead to handle them again and it also has a strong tendency to jack up the call stack as far as reporting goes. If we want to take a different action according to some condition, we need some kind of conditional structure inside the handler. The following code shows a traditional approach to conditionally handling an exception based on its Message property.

try
{
  throw new Exception("Forced Exception");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
  if (ex.Message.Equals("Forced Exception", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
  {
    WriteLine("Filtered handler");
  }

  throw;
}

The preceding snippet is pretty simple but it’s easy to see how more complex filtering scenarios could complicate the handler code. Exception filters improve this story by catching exceptions only when some criteria is met. If the criteria isn’t met, the exception processing logic proceeds as normal, either moving on to the next handler definition or bubbling up. Here’s the above example revised to use exception filtering:

try
{
  throw new Exception("Forced Exception");
}
catch (Exception ex) if (ex.Message.Equals("Forced Exception", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
{
  WriteLine("Filtered handler");
}

Here you can see how the condition has been moved into the catch block itself via a contextual if statement. Now the handler body will execute if and only if the expression within the parenthesis evaluates to true. Now, at this point you might be thinking about ways to abuse this and you wouldn’t be alone. In fact, the CTP notes point out how a false returning function can be used as an exception filter to cause some side-effect (such as logging) related to the exception without actually handling the exception.

[7/30/2015] This article was written against a pre-release version of C# 6.0. Be sure to check out the list of my five favorite C# 6.0 features for content written against the release!

[Update: 1 Oct 2014] It has been said that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The adage apparently even applies to the proposed C# 6 features that I was excited about. I’m sad to say that it was announced today that declaration expressions would not be part of C# 6.

The C# 6.0 feature I’m probably the most excited about is declaration expressions. That the feature is listed as done on the language feature implementation status page and is included in the CTP only enhances my excitement.

Declaration expressions allow us to define local variables within an expression and scope them to the nearest block. As the CTP C# Features notes, this is particularly useful in conjunction with out parameters. Consider the traditional approach for working with an out parameter:

int result;
var myInt =
  int.TryParse("42", out result)
    ? result
    : 0;

I (like many others) hate this pattern, especially after having been so spoiled with F#’s approach of wrapping the call and returning both the status and parsed value as a tuple. Since C# probably won’t include usable Tuples anytime soon, declaration expressions provide a nice alternative as shown here:

var myInt =
  int.TryParse("42", out var result)
    ? result
    : 0;

In the previous snippet, we’ve moved the declaration of result into the TryParse call itself! Because I opted to use the conditional operator here, result is still visible within the parent context but other constructs (such as if statements) can limit the scope thus decreasing the risk of dealing with an uninitialized value. I call that a win.

Declaration expressions open up all sorts of other possibilities, too. For instance, the CTP notes show how they can improve the developer experience in cases where expressions are required using query expressions as an example:

var myInts =
  from ps in
    (from s in strings
     select (int.TryParse(s, out var result) ? result : (int?)null))
  where ps.HasValue
  select ps.Value;

Without declaration expressions, the preceding query expression would have required us to wrap the parsing logic within another function but because we can include the result variable definition inline, such a query is possible.

Finally, how many times have you written something like this?

var myStr = myObj as MyType;
if (myStr != null)
{
  ...
}

The as operator pattern doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the out parameter pattern but it still feels dirty since it exposes the variable outside of where it’s actually needed. Declaration expressions let us make this a bit prettier, again by moving the declaration inline with the if statement as follows:

if ((var myStr = myObj as string) != null)
{
  ...
}

I like this approach a bit better than the traditional approach not because it lets us write less code (it doesn’t, really since the lines are just merged) but because it limits the scope of myStr.

So yeah, I’m pretty excited about this feature and think it’s safe to assume that I’ll be adopting it just as quickly as I do primary constructors once it’s generally available.

[7/30/2015] This article was written against a pre-release version of C# 6.0. Be sure to check out the list of my five favorite C# 6.0 features for content written against the release!

After two posts of new C# features that I like I thought it would be fun to change the pace a bit and discuss one that my initial impressions leave me questioning its usefulness: index initializers. I think the reason I’m confused about this feature is that all of the examples I’ve seen around it show dictionary initialization like this:

var numbers =
    new Dictionary<int, string>
    {
        [7] = "seven",
        [9] = "nine",
        [13] = "thirteen"
    };

My problem with this is that C# has allowed initializing dictionaries using a very similar manner since version 3! Here’s the same dictionary initialized with the more traditional object initializer syntax:

var numbers =
    new Dictionary<int, string>
    {
        { 7, "seven" },
        { 9, "nine" },
        { 13, "thirteen" }
    };

So we’ve swapped pairs of curly braces for pairs of square brackets and some commas with assignments? I just don’t see the benefit. It’s not that I’m opposed to index initializers; I’m confused as to why another syntax is needed for something we’ve been able to do in almost exactly the same way for years. The hint that may clear up the reasoning comes from the CTP notes which state:

We are adding a new syntax to object initializers allowing you to set values to keys through any indexer that the new object has

Given that statement, I can see indexer initializers being more useful in conjunction with custom types. Even still, it seems like the only benefit would really be foregoing specific Add method overloads on the custom type but index initializers would still be at the mercy of said type having a compatible indexer property. Unfortunately index initializers aren’t available in the CTP so I can’t really experiment with them at this time and anything else I could say about the feature would be pure speculation.