Friday, 24 June 2016

Hidden Features of C#?


lambdas and type inferrence are underrated. Lambdas can have multiple statements and theydouble as a compatible delegate object automatically (just make sure the signature match) as in:
Console.CancelKeyPress +=
    (sender, e) => {
        Console.WriteLine("CTRL+C detected!\n");
        e.Cancel = true;
    };
Note that I don't have a new CancellationEventHandler nor do I have to specify types of senderand e, they're inferable from the event. Which is why this is less cumbersome to writing the whole delegate (blah blah) which also requires you to specify types of parameters.
Lambdas don't need to return anything and type inference is extremely powerful in context like this.
And BTW, you can always return Lambdas that make Lambdas in the functional programming sense. For example, here's a lambda that makes a lambda that handles a Button.Click event:
Func<int, int, EventHandler> makeHandler =
    (dx, dy) => (sender, e) => {
        var btn = (Button) sender;
        btn.Top += dy;
        btn.Left += dx;
    };

btnUp.Click += makeHandler(0, -1);
btnDown.Click += makeHandler(0, 1);
btnLeft.Click += makeHandler(-1, 0);
btnRight.Click += makeHandler(1, 0);
Note the chaining: (dx, dy) => (sender, e) =>
Now that's why I'm happy to have taken the functional programming class :-)
Other than the pointers in C, I think it's the other fundamental thing you should learn :-)

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