Chain – a LINQ operator for dealing with Linked Lists
I don’t think there’s anything in LINQ that will do this, though I expect I’m wrong - I have a tendency to write my own extension method to do something and then discover that LINQ already provides a...
View ArticleGeneric Value Object With Yield Return
Inspired by this and this, here's my version.Jan Van Ryswyck is right to use static reflection, and to do that he "registers" the properties in a list. On the other hand, assuming you'd have a lot of...
View ArticleLazy Sequence Generation without using Yield Return
C# has the yield return feature, which makes it easy to write state machines as if they were plain old methods:class Program { static IEnumerable<int> SomeNumbers() {...
View ArticleVC++16 has decltype in Beta 1 (so Linq to C++0x looks a little nicer)
This post has moved to my new(er) blog and can be found here: http://smellegantcode.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/vc16-has-decltype-in-beta-1-so-linq-to-c0x-looks-a-little-nicer/A while ago I wrote up a...
View ArticleRecovery
If you want your application to be able to recover from a crash, it would NOT be ideal for it to restore the exact state it was in immediately before the crash, because then it would just crash...
View ArticleWhen to use Stored Procedures?
No coding blog would be complete without an overly-simplistic salvo fired into this bloody online battlefield, so here's mine.What if you're writing an application that will make heavy use of an...
View ArticleGeneral form of C# Object Initializers
C# has a language feature that allows several properties of an object to be assigned to as a suffix to a new expression, namely the object initializer:var myObj = new MyClass { SomeProperty = 5,...
View ArticleReadonly Fields and Thread Safety
In C# you can mark the fields of a type as readonly (indeed you generally should if it's a struct). By doing so, you make it illegal to change the fields except in a constructor of the type.The...
View ArticleJavaScript Invaders!
Click in the small text field in the top left corner to give allow the game to receive keyboard events.Z = left X = right M = fire
View ArticleThe Amazing Speed of the .NET Garbage Collector
Coming from a C++ background, I always balk at designs that involve lots of small heap allocations. It’s something I’m gradually training myself to stop doing, because in managed code, it’s a...
View ArticleMaking Lambdas and Iterators Play Nicely Together
The major problem with this idea is in my favourite feature of C#. In an iterator (a function containing the yield keyword), the code is transformed into a state machine represented by a class. It has...
View ArticleFatal Exceptions, and Why VB.NET Has a Purpose!
There’s a feature in the CLR that is exposed in VB.NET and not in C#. Apparently this is a deliberate decision made by the C# team, which so far they’ve stuck to. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty important...
View ArticleWhat's Wrong With C# 4.0's dynamic Keyword, and How I Think It Should Be Fixed
Update: Exactly what I want, already implemented, complete with caching of the call site. Also, Microsoft's Mads Torgersen responds to this suggestion here. C# 4.0 proposes to add the dynamic keyword...
View ArticleGeneral Theory of Resources
Having blogged the other day about a different way of doing automatic cleanup, I’ve been mulling it over and also answering a question on StackOverflow, and decided that I need to assemble a taxonomy...
View ArticleDisplaying a nested evaluation tree from Expression
Updated: The downloadable source (see link below) is now tidied up a bit, and also displays any embedded string comparisons in a similar way to NUnit.This might be useful as a way to write Assert...
View ArticleA functional replacement for the using statement
The using-statement is just that: a statement. Why does this bug me?The FileStream object has a Length property. Assuming I have a function Open that returns a FileStream ready for us, it is awfully...
View ArticleFurther Muddying the ForEach Waters
ForEach is regularly proposed as a missing feature in the BCL but has been rejected in the past apparently because it wouldn't be "functional" enough, doesn't return anything so calls cannot be chained...
View ArticleUsing Collection Initializers with Immutable Lists
The Incomparable Mr Skeet mentions how irksome it is that collection initializers assume that the collection is mutable.Suppose we defined an "immutable-yet-initializable collection" as any type that...
View ArticleLinq to C++0x
Updated 2009-01-28 - completely different approach to get a fluent interface.Updated 2009-05-22 - See new post with decltype goodness!C++ has long had some functional-styled things in its standard...
View ArticleOra Stories
I've written an add-in for Visual Studio called Ora. You can read more about it via that link but here's some background to it.It's designed to replace a common use of regions - though I'd call it a...
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