What Language Features Do You Miss In C#?

[JeremyBob]

+1 from me

[m0sa]

- aspect oriented programming (PostSharp...) - mixin support - serializable expressions

[Marach]

you can type several 'case' statements one after the other. contrived example:

int number = GetNumberBetween1And5();
string text = null;
switch( number ) {
case 1:
text = "1";
break;
case 2:
case 3:
case 4:
text = "2 or 3 or 4";
break;
case 5:
text = "5";
break;
}

is that type of fall-through what you said you're missing?

[OriginalGriff]

I agree - it isn't. But...it is a out-of-structure code flow indicator, which can easily create the same spaghetti code as a goto. So on balance, while I found the no-drop-through rule limiting at first, I don't miss it so much now. I just restructure the code to not need it in the same way that I don't need goto itself. And I definitely agree on break - the switch version should have used a different word: "esac" or "join" perhaps.

If you get an email telling you that you can catch Swine Flu from tinned pork then just delete it. It's Spam.

[OriginalGriff]

Because I have A Dangerous Mind[^] :-D

If you get an email telling you that you can catch Swine Flu from tinned pork then just delete it. It's Spam.

[Sentenryu]

like this[^]?

I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p) "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241

[Sentenryu]

why the heck you just don't use a generic method?

public void DoGenericStuff(Foo foo)
{
....
}

I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p) "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241

[Sentenryu]

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

A proper assignment operator like in Pascal :=:-D
 
A proper define directive like in C/C++ # define Pi 3.14 ... Multiple Inheritence would be good too.

if any of thouse got added i would be sooo mad, i alread have too much bad code to deal even without those...

I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p) "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241

[Sentenryu]

H.Brydon wrote:

Destructors that destruct (not the silly Dispose() stuff) [you can easily trigger local garbage collection with an exit from scope]

I couldn't agree more.

I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p) "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241

[Sentenryu]

that's not allowed with an Expression parameter?

I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p) "Given the chance I'd rather work smart than work hard." - PHS241

[Member 9063556]

Plugin support is always an issue with C#. You can't use User Controls inside a Console Application, which makes that coding needs to be done each class. C++ holds great support for adding plugins for extra code (.h files sepcifically are useful) but in the end, you can't blame Microsoft for their .NET approach to everything, The time of a CLI is dead (Except PowerShell, IMO)

[Bassam Abdul Baki]

Nice! Although one difference in my envisioned approach would be that I could potentially have sequential or embded #thread blocks within the same function. With this, you have to make each thread a function as opposed to using it in a for or while loop, for example.

Web - BM - RSS - Math - LinkedIn

[Marc A Brown]

I already knew about (and use) that type of fallthrough (but thanks for pointing it out anyway). I'm talking about a case (no pun intended) where you have an action to perform in two cases that requires some kind of setup in one of the cases but not the other.

switch(whichAction)
{
case Actions.ActionWithSetup:
DoSetup();
case Actions.Action:
DoAction();
break;
}

In this example, in the one case, DoSetup is performed, followed by DoAction; in the other case only DoAction is performed. You can do this in C (and Java as I recall) but not in C#. I'm fine with the language not allowing the fallthrough to happen unintentionally but think there should be a keyword to allow it. For example:

switch(whichAction)
{
case Actions.ActionWithSetup:
DoSetup();
nobreak;
case Actions.Action:
DoAction();
break;
}

I realize that in my example I could simply call DoAction in both cases (and that's what I would do, given the C# limitation); and I also understand that if I've got a block of code in the second case, I can break it out into a separate method and call that method in both cases (which again is what I would do); however, if it's a really small block of code, I don't necessarily want to create a new method for it or duplicate the code.

[Marach]

Thanks for elaborating, I understand now. And I agree that C# language should have some construct like the suggested one to allow the fall-through.

[Tim Schwallie]

I believe that's been there since version 1.0

[glennPattonWork3]

Amen, would make life easier at the moment! mind you can get them from C++ Glenn

[glennPattonWork3]

VB error handling, really?

[Tim Schwallie]

Enum that supports other types, not just integral types. A required tag on the end of block regions. Why? Cause it can become a bitch knowing which '}' belongs with what after a while and folks are too lazy to comment. Or VS could get better and put a comment there for you. But then this isn't about VS. Improved Friend relationships between DLL's. Current way of setting up Friend relationships is awkward.

[Paulo Zemek]

Hahahahaha. You didn't get it at all. Imagine that for some reason you don't know the T type at compile-time. You are in an event or something and you are receiving a valid value, but it is cast as object. How do you do a call to the generic class without knowing its generic type? In such case, it is up to you to do the cast, but you don't have the destination type at compile time. The solution in such situation is to use reflection or dynamic. I solve the problem having an untyped interface. That works very well for my classes, but not to already existing classes. Even if it is not a generic class situation, you can see that happening with database connections. You have SqlConnection, OracleConnection, SqlCommand, OracleCommand, SqlParameter, OracleParameter and so on. But you can use all of them al IDbConnection, IDbCommand and so on. So, you create a parameter using the command... you dont know if it is an OracleParameter or SqlParameter... but it is not important, as when you add a parameter to a command the driver do the cast for you. (Ok, it is a little stupid that you create the parameter and it is not added automatically... but I want to ilustrate a situation where you have a valid value [the parameter] but you don't have the valid type).

[Florian Rappl]

I do not really agree, since case statements form a valid label and goto LABEL is a real goto. Why was goto brought to C (and therefore to C++, C#, ...) anyway? It is REALLY simple to implement goto in C (for transferring into assembler). Its jut a plain JMP. Labels can be transferred nearly 1-1, so having a goto the way it has been introduced to C makes sense. switch-case statements have just a list of JE statements, i.e. using goto is the way to use those labels outside of the usual flow. Here is how switch-case results in MSIL:

IL_0001: ldc.i4.5
IL_0002: stloc.0 // a
IL_0003: ldloc.0 // a
IL_0004: stloc.1 // CS$4$0000
IL_0005: ldloc.1 // CS$4$0000
IL_0006: switch (IL_0015, IL_0022)
IL_0013: br.s IL_002F
IL_0015: ldstr "Zero"
IL_001A: call LINQPad.Extensions.Dump
IL_001F: pop
IL_0020: br.s IL_003C
IL_0022: ldstr "Zero"
IL_0027: call LINQPad.Extensions.Dump
IL_002C: pop
IL_002D: br.s IL_003C
IL_002F: ldstr "Nothing"
IL_0034: call LINQPad.Extensions.Dump
IL_0039: pop
IL_003A: br.s IL_003C

The line IL_0006 will result in the list of JE statements. The following program was used to produce these lines of IL code:

void Main()
{
var a = 5;

switch(a)
{
	case 0:
		"Zero".Dump();
		break;
	case 1:
		"One".Dump();
		break;
	default:
		"Non-Zero".Dump();
		break;
}

}

If you would now compare this to usual labels you would see that both are identical. It's really just a syntax thing that case statements start with case, hence since one has always to specify the full label, the case needs to be included for any goto call on those labels.