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CodeRush Xpress for Visual Studio: Free

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I’m a big fan of ReSharper (despite the fact that I still haven’t mastered all of the commands and shortcuts) and the features it brings to code editing in Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. When you see people like Jean Paul Boodhoo using it to the full, it’s sheer wizardary! So I hope the people at JetBrains won’t brand me a traitor(!) when I mention that CodeRush Xpress for Visual Studio 2008 is now freely available.

But, be careful if you have CodeRush or ReFactor! already installed:

  • Does not support Visual Studio Express Editions.
  • Cannot be installed side-by-side with other CodeRush or Refactor! editions.

Reminder: Perth .NET User Group Meeting Tues 4th Nov, 5:30pm: F# with Nick Hodge

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TOPIC: F# > functional with Nick Hodge
DATE: Tuesday, November 4th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Tuesday November 4th to hear Nick Hodge present a session on F# and the rise and rise of the new .NET functional and dynamic languages, where and when to use them, and why F# is NOT the new C#!

String.Split(): Skip Empty Entries

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At the risk of publicising that I’m the last person to know this(!), I recently discovered that String.Split() has an overload that takes a parameter
StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries that does exactly what it says, like this:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: #a31515; }.cb3 { color: #2b91af; }

char[] separator = new char[] { ',' };
string[] result;
string toSplit = "Rick,Dave,,Nick,,,Roger,";
 
result = toSplit.Split(separator,
                       StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
foreach (string s in result)
{
    Console.WriteLine("[{0}]", s);
}

This is also very useful for splitting text where extra whitespace should be ignored:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: #a31515; }.cb3 { color: #2b91af; }

string woods = "The woods are  lovely, dark and deep.." +
               "But I  have promises to keep, " +
               "And miles to  go before  I sleep,, " +
               "And   miles to go before I sleep.";
char[] whitespace = { ' ', ',', ';', ':', '.', '!', '?' };
 
string[] words = woods.Split(whitespace,
                             StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
foreach (string s in words)
{
    Console.WriteLine("[{0}]", s);
}

Perth .NET User Group Meeting, Tues Nov 4th, 5:30pm: F# |> Functional with Nick Hodge

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Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Tuesday November 4th to hear Nick Hodge present a session on F# and the rise and rise of the new .NET functional and dynamic languages, where and when to use them, and why F# is NOT the new C#!

TOPIC: F# > Functional with Nick Hodge
DATE: Tuesday, November 4th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Level 2, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

Nick is a self-confessed professional geek working for Microsoft. He has over 22 years of IT industry experience in a variety of sales, technical, management, semi-marketing and strategic roles. He is a sought-after presenter, prolific social networker and closet workaholic.

Please Note: This meeting is not in our usual Thursday slot.

C# Tips and Tricks

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There is a very useful post over at StackOverflow on some of the less known parts of C#. Here are a few of my favourites:

Default Event Handler:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: #2b91af; }.cb3 { color: green; }

public delegate void MyClickHandler(object sender, string myValue);
public event MyClickHandler Click = delegate { }; // add empty delegate!

Let’s you do this:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: #a31515; }

public void DoSomething()
{
    Click(this, "foo");
}

Instead of checking for null before invocation:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: green; }.cb3 { color: #a31515; }

public void DoSomething()
{
    if (Click != null) // Unnecessary
    {
        Click(this, "foo");
    }
}

Chaining the ?? operator:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: #2b91af; }

string result = val1 ?? val2 ?? val3 ?? String.Empty;

And it never ceases to amaze me that many devs don’t use System.IO.Path.Combine(), instead of:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: #a31515; }

string path = dir + "\\" + fileName;

Do You Review?

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I can honestly say I love where I work. And today was a classic example why. I had a code review! (does your team have code reviews?). One of my colleagues pointed out I could make use of Nullable GetValueOrDefault() in the following code snippet:

Instead of this:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: blue; }.cb2 { color: green; }.cb3 { color: #2b91af; }

int? objectID;          // passed in to a method...
DateTime? signedDate;   // --- "" ---
 
if (objectID == null)
{
    objectID = 0;
}
 
if (signedDate == null)
{
    signedDate = (DateTime)SqlDateTime.MinValue;
}
 
SomeDBWrapperMethod((int)objectID, (DateTime)signedDate);

Just do this:
.cf { font-family: Consolas, Courier New, Courier, Monospace; font-size: 9pt; color: black; background: white; }.cl { margin: 0px; }.cb1 { color: #2b91af; }

SomeDBWrapperMethod(objectID.GetValueOrDefault(), 
                    signedDate.GetValueOrDefault((DateTime)SqlDateTime.MinValue));

Seems so obvious, after the fact! I’m sure I must have come across this before, but I can’t remember having ever used it. It’s great to have extra pairs of eyes go over your code.

SQL Server scripts

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A few SQL Server script resources:

Updated: added a few more.