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Showing posts from April, 2008

Extension Methods - A Polished C++ Feature !!!

Extension Method is an excellent feature in C# 3.0. It is a mechanism by which new methods can be exposed from an existing type (interface or class) without directly adding the method to the type. Why do we need extension methods anyway ? Ok, that is the big story of lamba and LINQ. But from a conceptual standpoint, the extension methods establish a mechanism to extend the public interface of a type. The compiler is smart enough to make the method a part of the public interface of the type. Yeah, that is what it does, and the intellisense is very cool in making us believe that. It is cleaner and easier (for the library developers and for us programmers even) to add extra functionality (methods) not provided in the type. That is the intent. And we know that was exercised extravagantly in LINQ. The IEnumerable was extended with a whole lot set of methods to aid the LINQ design. Remember the Where, Select etc methods on IEnumerable. An example code snippet is worth a thousand