Some useful C# 2.0 features
Our team has recently moved over to the .NET Framework
2.0 and I've decided to catch up on this new skill by reading the C# 2.0 specification. There are a couple of well-known
features such as iterators, anonymous methods (yuck) and generics, but I noticed
two small features that might have a tremendous effect on our team's
productivity.
The first is the new double-question-mark operator. Consider the following
code snippet:
object foo = bar ?? String.Empty;
This piece of code will assign foo to bar only if bar is
not null. If bar is null, then foo will be assigned to String.Empty. As a matter of interest, this operator was introduced as part of the nullable types feature, but it will work with any reference type.
The second feature is called Property Accessor Accessibility. I
really missed this feature while developing in .NET 1.1, but now it is part of
C# 2.0, and allows you to modify the accessibility of a property's get or set
accessor.
Let's say that you have a property that you want to be read publicly, but you
only want to modify it internally, then you will write a code snippet similar to
the following:
public object Foo
{
get {
return foo; }
internal set { foo = value; }
}
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