comic by xkcd.com ^

If someone would have asked me a few years ago when to use the goto keyword I would have answered (in capital letters): NEVER!! GOTO’S ARE EVIL! (and obviously you get attacked by raptors if you use them)

Like many I have been educated to have a emotional reaction when someone mentions the goto keyword. Emotions have nothing to do with good practices, so lets take a pragmatic look on some of the common usages of goto and see what the real value of the goto keyword is.

Lutz Roeder’s .NET Reflector enables you to browse and search through the class hierarchies of .NET assemblies even if you don’t have the code for them.

The README describes the application as follows:

Reflector is a class browser for .NET components. It allows browsing and searching the meta data, IL instructions, resources and XML documentation stored in a .NET assembly.

The .NET Reflector is in my opinion one of the most useful tools for serious .NET developers. It simply allows you to see what happens behind the cover of the .NET framework.

You probably know that you can right click on a method in code and click on ‘Go To Definition’ (or press F12) to get to the method definition. A very handy feature. Often I find myself looking at the method and then I want to go back were I was before I clicked on Go To Definition.

About a year ago my work colleague and I discussed wether the name of an enumeration should be plural or singular. In the .NET framework both is quite common:

System.Drawing.FontStyle

is singular while

System.IO.FileAttributes

is plural. So when should you use one and one the other?

I am assuming you are familiar with NUnit.

    try 
    {
    } 
    finally {}

pattern.

Basically the try - finally pattern allows you to execute some additional code before the execution is leaving the try { } code block.Take this:

System.Windows.Forms.Cursor originalCursor = System.Windows.Forms.Cursor.Current;    
System.Windows.Forms.Cursor.Current = System.Windows.Forms.Cursors.WaitCursor;   
try    
{        
    //some interesting code here    
}    
finally    
{        
    System.Windows.Forms.Cursor.Current = originalCursor;    
}

The above code sets the cursor to a waiting cursor and sets it back to whatever it was after the code finishes. The good thing is that you don’t have to worry about the code in the try block at all. There could be exceptions happening or return statements, the finally block will be called before the execution continues.

With over 19.000 articles, more than four million users and almost five million visitors per month The Code Project is the number one resource for .NET developers. I have been a member of the code project for more than five years and on countless occasions I have taken advantage of the knowledge available on the site.