Question

Unfortunately, I can’t show code, but here’s the story:
I’m supposed to learn how a program we use at work works. I traced the flow of data from a user interface element into the deep internals of a function. But now, inside of a class definition I got stuck. The data I’m tracking is passed to a function. In the class there’s a line with a function signature for that function, but no implementation.

How do I go about finding the implementation? All the code (except for Microsoft’s) was developed in house and should reside within the project, but Go To Definition only brings me back to the signature.

We’re using C# and .Net 4.0.

Here’s the line:

public abstract class SomethingDoer : SomethingElse
    // ...
    protected abstract void DoSomething(T1 param1, T2 param2, T3 param3);

Now I’m looking for the implementing class by looking for References to SomethingDoer, but unfortunately the break point isn’t hitting. Do I have the wrong class or am I missing something about abstract functions?

Answer 1

Without code this is really hard to answer. A function definition without implementation is usually an interface or abstract. Interfaces can have only definitions, while abstract can mix both:

public interface ISomeInterface {
    void SomeMethod();
}

public abstract SomeAbstractClass {
    public abstract void SomeMethod();

    public void AwesomeMethod() {
        // I do awesome things; look at my method body!
    }
}