A fast way of converting C# enums to strings–and back again.

I recently needed a fast way of converting lots of enums to strings (and back again).  I needed to do it very quickly.  ‘Enum.Parse’ just wasn’t fast enough.

I discovered there was no ‘enum mapper’ in C#, so I knocked up this little class.  It uses reflection just once when it comes across a new enum.

It’s compatible with .NET 3.5 too.

Handy use of extension method on a bool

I don’t like to overuse if/else statements.  I really dislike seeing code like this:

if(somethingIsTrue)
{
  DoSomethingWhenTrue( ) ;
}
else
{
  DoSomethingElse( ) ;
}

I just had an idea about using extension methods so I can write this instead:

somethingIsTrue.Branch(
        ( ) => DoSomethingWhenTrue( ),
        ( ) => DoSomethingElse( ) ) ;

… and here’s the extension method:

public static void Branch(this bool @bool, Action left, Action right)
{
  if( @bool )
  {
    left( ) ;
  }
  else
  {
    right( ) ;
  }
}

Nice or not? I think it reads a bit better (for single line expressions anyway).