Question

I’m a Visual C++.net programmer that converted to C# about a year ago, and I really miss __FILE__, and __LINE__. To replace __FILE__, I wrote a nice function to return class.method, which is awesome, but there is no suitable alternative for __LINE__ (correct me if I’m wrong!).

I understand the language difference and technical limitations, and the reasoning, and all that stuff.

What I’m asking is this:

Is it practical, or even possible, to write some visual studio extension (that all of our developers would have installed), that would allow for us to define some type of token (~~LINE~~ or something), that we could have text replacement or something switch that symbol to the actual VS line number, when compiled into an executable?

My knowledge of extensions programming is minimal, I do not know the ext. systems limitations.

Edit for clarification:

In C++, __FILE__, once compiled, will return the current file you wrote your code in, and __LINE__, your current line. This is important because all of our logging systems (10+ years old), all require a char* for the file, and an int for the line, we’re logging from.

C# cannot produce these two ‘tokens’ like C++ can.

As an example:

LoggingService.LogException(e, "file.cs", 1234);  

is what I want to get compiled into my executable, and

LoggingService.LogException(e, ~~MYFILE~~, ~~MYLINE~~); 

is what I want my code to look like, and saved on disk. I have a suitable alternative to get the file, but I don’t have one to get the line.

Edit 2:

These our release builds, without debugging symbols. Our product installs would have to be hundreds of megabytes larger in order to accomidate this fix, which is out of the question.

Answer 1

Caller Information is coming in .NET 4.5. This will be compiled, a big improvment over having to examine the stacktrace manually:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh534540(v=vs.110).aspx

public void LogException(Exception ex,
        [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "",
        [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0)
{
    // Log it!
}

Thanks to the compiler magic, this would be called as:

LoggingService.LogException(e);