Question

I was looking up how to do something when I cam upon a bit of example code that had the following format:

public static SecureString ConvertToSecureString(this string password)
{
    // stuff
}

What does that “this” do?

Answer 1

It makes it an extension method, meaning you will be able to do:

var secureString = "someString".ConvertToSecureString();

It basically adds functionality to any instance of an object of the type that comes after the keyword “this” in there.

You can read more about extension methods here.