Sree's blog

Joining Halo Team

2009-09-06T00:05:09Z

After spending 4 years in the C# compiler team, i have decided its time for me to try something new. A few weeks back i joined in the Halo team and have started my exciting journey there. I won’t be posting anything new about C# in the near future and the don’t know what shareable halo info i will have. Thanks to all the people who read my blog and kept it entertaining, please feel free to ask me any questions. I will certainly try to answer ( or redirect to my ex-colleagues in C#). Moving on to...(read more)

Why Can’t Extension methods on Value Type be curried

2009-06-25T20:02:01Z

This is a followup to an post Extension Methods and Curried delegates . I have been recently asked if why Error CS1113: “Extension methods ' Name ' defined on value type ' typename ' cannot be used to create delegates” was added and what does it mean ? Here is the sort version of the story, basically the there is no direct translation to IL that would be correct for the operation( an extension method defined on a value type to be current as an instance method and assigned to a delegate). To try this...(read more)

Debugging Dynamic objects in C# Part 1

2009-02-25T00:01:00Z

After a long time spent working on dev 10 features and fixing the may big and small things i have finally had the time to cobble togather a post. What’s this post about ? To begin with i will be talking about debugging dynamic objects. With C# 4.0 we can instantiate and perform operations on objects from dynamic languages like iron python, Iron ruby by using the dynamic keyword. In this post i will show you the tools added to inspection these objects and how one can reuse this for debugging COM objects....(read more)

C# Debugging Improvement for VS 2008 SP1- Part II

2008-06-14T00:10:00Z

Anonymous Types On Further review there are a few problems with anonymous-types, they all boil down to the fact the names given to these types are not valid C# type names ( so that users don't explicitly use them in code). But while debugging this is exactly the kind of thing that one wants to do, Consider the following cases Case1: The anonymous type appears in a cast, like when an anonymous type is returned from a function or when its cast from System.Object to the actual type. var obj = Func(...(read more)

C# Debugging Improvements for VS 2008 SP1- Part 1

2008-01-21T23:25:00Z

Overview Over the past few months I have been busy closing VS 2008 and working on some fixes for SP1. We have enabled some key debugging scenarios in C# in VS 2008 SP1, they include support for Range Variables in Queries & Anonymous Types Generic Type arguments Covering all of them was making the post long so i am going to discuss Range variables this time and continue on with the other 2 in the next post. Range variables Range variables are the variables defined and used in a query. Currently...(read more)

Debugging C# 3.0 Part II

2007-11-30T01:01:00Z

Overview In the last article I covered the "results view" for lazy evaluated collections like Queries/Enumerable and the use of extension methods in the watch and immediate window. For completeness I will cover stepping, range variables, anonymous types and Xlinq support and this will lead us into the SP1 work for debugging. Stepping Stepping has been extended to support the query execution. That is, when the query is being executed one can step though the query created or add break points for the...(read more)

Extension methods Interoperability between languages

2007-10-11T20:58:39Z

Extension methods written in C# can be imported and called with Extension method semantics in VB and vice versa. This is possible since me decorate the assemblies , types and methods in the same manner. Using the Attribute [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method | AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Assembly)] public sealed class ExtensionAttribute : Attribute { } This should be a special note to developers writing their own compilers or doing IL gen. This decoration allows the importer to...(read more)

Conversion rules for Instance parameters and their impact

2007-10-11T20:45:39Z

Overview: Instance parameter is the first parameter of an extension method and has the " this " parameter modifier. I discuss special conversion rules for them and some of the things that users of extension methods might encounter. Consider the code bellow using System; using System.Linq; namespace TestExtensions { class Program { static void Main() { 0.Foo(); // 1 0f.Foo(); 0d.Foo(); A.Foo(0); // 2 A.Foo(0f); A.Foo(0d); } } public static class A { public static void Foo( this long x) { Console .WriteLine(...(read more)

Debugging and Delayed Execution in C# 3.0

2007-07-12T21:55:00Z

Overview: C# 3.0 added a few constructs like queries which are delay executed. This means that they are not actually executed until the results of the query are required. Debugging some of them can seem strange since one can't step in to the Query where its created but only where its enumerated, like in a foreach loop. In this article i will show some of the problems that the user can face based on the fact that the Query is delay executed and the debugger tries to be as non-intrusive as possible....(read more)

Debugging Features in C# 3.0 Part 1

2007-05-20T07:52:00Z

Overview C# 3.0 introduces many new constructs and opens entirely new ways of thinking and developing code. In this article I will talk about the new debugging features that make it easy to see the running code and better understand it. In my experience one spends as much time writing the initial code as debugging it later. In fact stepping though the code and inspecting variables and expressions is one of the best ways to understand it. So its not just the original writer but many more who will...(read more)

Learning C#

2007-05-07T20:31:00Z

I was recently asked by a developer "I know C++ how do i get into C# and .Net". If you want to understand the language design and its inner workings I would suggest The C# programing Language . If you want to use .Net and C# try Practical .Net and C# . For the New feature in C#3.0 (lambdas, extension methods, object initilaizers, LINQ etc) check out the 3.0 Spec for the overview and C# site for the latest stuff.(blogs, articles, videos and what not) As with anything write some applications using...(read more)

Extension methods and Curried Delegates

2007-05-02T02:19:00Z

Delegates Since Extension methods behave like instance method it makes sense that we should be able to create delegates that would accept the instance method signature, to this end we have included Adding an Extension Methods to delegate invocation List Extension methods can now be used like an instance methods when being added to a delegate invocation list. So for Extension method Bar defined as static int Bar (this foo f ) { return f.val ; } We will now allow delegates that accept the instance...(read more)

Extension method Binding and Error reporting

2007-04-27T06:51:00Z

Overview: Extension methods are static methods that are bound with instance semantics. In this article i will give a brief overview of the various steps involved in binding a extension methods. Finally this will prepare the way to discuss the error reporting for extension methods and how these error messages can be used to diagnose the problem at hand. All methods calls bound in the compiler go though a 3 phase, The methods to be bound are defined in source or imported, A lookup for their name finds...(read more)

Extension methods in C#

2007-04-25T23:50:00Z

Overview Extension methods are a new feature for C# 3.0 and I had the opportunity to implement them in the Compiler. These methods can then be called with instance syntax on any object that is convertible(see convertibility section for details) to the first param of the method. Validation Extension methods are defined in C# as static class Extensions { public static IEnumerable <T> Where<T>( this IEnumerable <T> sequence, Predicate <T> predicate) { foreach (T item in sequence)...(read more)

Hello Web

2007-04-04T03:47:00Z

Who am I?

My name is Sreekar Choudhary and Welcome to my blog, I am a Dev on the C# compiler Team. I work most of the time on language features and implementing debugging framework for C# developers inside VS.

What's this blog about?

Well it’s about the cool features of that I get to design and work on and any other relavent technical topic that is of interest to me or the readers.