#needsmoreprettypictures

One of my favorite features of Unity 2017.1 is the (experimental) update to the supported C# language version to C# 6. While there isn’t any single feature that will drastically change the way I program, there are a few features that can simplify your code and I thought I’d share some examples.

First off you need to enable the correct language version by switching your scripting runtime to “Experimental (.NET 4.6 Equivalent).” This will require an editor restart, and then you’ll be ready to go!

String Interpolation

String interpolation is a simple syntax addition to make creating strings from data a bit easier. Previously if you wanted to create a string that contained some variable data you’d end up doing something like: 

With string interpolation you can change this to:

Or you could even simplify it further to:

Null Conditional

Sometimes when you need to pull data out of an object hierarchy it can end up looking something like this:

This is a made up example to belabor the point, but you get the idea. Checking for null at each step in the chain and exiting, to prevent hitting a null pointer exception. With C# 6′s null conditional operator, instead you can simply do this:

The ‘?’ after each step in the access chain says “if this is null exit the chain early and set prefabName2 to null, otherwise keep going.”

Index Initializers

So for a while we’ve been able to initialize a list with pre-set values, like so: 

which is great, right? This syntax also works for dictionaries:

works great, and should work for any class that implements IEnumerable and has an appropriate Add() method to add new elements.

C# 6 adds a new option called an Index Initializer. Instead of relying on IEnumerable and Add(), it uses indexing behind the scenes to set values. Our dictionary would now look like this: 

This syntax should work for anything that has a custom indexer. For simpler cases like a generic Dictionary, you’re probably fine just using whichever syntax you prefer.

Hey, what about async/await?