Collection Initializers

Collection initializers are very welcome in C# 3.0. Typing

new List<int> { 1, 2, 3 }

is of course much more convenient then typing

List<int> l = new List<int>();
l.Add(1);
l.Add(2);
l.Add(3);


However, when seeing examples (e.g. MSDN), one could think that you are limited in a single type in a collection initializer. But that is not true. You can use several Add overloads arbitrarily. Having the class

class MyCollection : IEnumerable
{
   public void Add(string s) { ... }
   public void Add(int i) { ... }
   public void Add(SomeClass c) { ... }

   //...
}

you can initialize it like this

new MyCollection
{
   "something",
   1,
   2,
   new SomeClass { ... },
   "yet another string",
   3
}

Infragistics.Documents versus ActiveReports

PDF document had to be rendered from an application. We used to use ActiveReports for PDF reports, but have experienced difficulties when maintaining them. I gave a try to Infragistics.Documents library. It looked nice, but a lot of coding would be required. I think one could prepare some set of classes that would allow fast creation of documents, but it would take some time we did not have. I had to admit, that it is much faster to create the document in ActiveReports, using the visual designer.
Perhaps this is just another prove of the rule "the less code you write the better".

Good bye floppy disks

I did a big tidy up at home recently and found a bunch of floppy disks. My wife were interested in two of them. I coppied their content to an USB disk (yes, I still can access the computer having a floppy drive) and I guess I will never use floppy disks again.

Rest in peace, floppy disks!

VisualStudio 2008 dead and alive

My VisualStudio 2008 stopped from runnning. After started, it reported several problems with loading of its parts and then crashed. Well, I wanted to repair the installation, but the installation program did not start, even. Because of that, I could neither uninstall the VisualStudio. Fortunately, I found the article on stackoverflow that helped me uninstall the VisualStudio.

I guess the problem was caused by uninstall of DataDynamics ActiveReports. Did anyone out there experience similar problem?

Boxing and arrays

There is one more catch with boxing (see also my former post Boxing and explicit conversions). Consider the code

public struct X
{
   public string Value { get; set; }
}

public void Fun()
{
   X x1 = new X { Value="original string 1" };
   X x2 = new X { Value="original string 2" };
   X[] array = new X[] { x1, x2 };

   array[0].Value = "modified string";
   //! x1 is not changed
}


I am occasionally amazed that x1 has "original string 1" on the line marked '!' although array[0] reads "modified string". Hell yes, that is because of boxing again. If X was class,  x1 would be changed, too.

Boxing and explicit conversions

Imagine you are writing a method that will process a number. You need to accept object as an argument.^*) You know that you will accept integers. You have considered the usage of int and long, and you have chosen long since int can be safely converted to long. So you prepare something like

void ProcessNumber(object o)
{
   long number = (long)o; //!
   //do something with number
}


You test your method, and — surprise — you receive System.InvalidCastException on the line marked '!' when calling ProcessNumber(1). The problem is that boxing is involved, and the argument is not longer just int.

You can cast a boxed value only if it is of the very same type!

If it is not certain that you will receive single type in all calls, you had better use the appropriate method of the System.Convert class.

^*) Consider accessing of properties via reflection.

Quotation of the Day

"If you do serious Oracle Development, you will be clueless sooner or later." source