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CSharpRepl: C# REPL with syntax highlighting and intellisense

142 points| aragonite | 1 year ago |fuqua.io | reply

43 comments

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[+] ammo1662|1 year ago|reply
There is an alternative of LinqPad. It does not have a lot of features, but it is good enough for testing code snippets.

https://github.com/roslynpad/roslynpad

[+] xnorswap|1 year ago|reply
When it comes to C# REPLs I absolutely adore LinqPad, although recently it's felt like I've had to buy licenses for it increasingly often which I've found annoying.

If any other REPL can get to a point where it can rival LinqPad in functionality then it'll be an absolute winner.

The key features linqpad has that I'd need from any replacement:

* Securely store secrets

Util.GetPassword prompts the user for the password if it's not in it's store. Leverages the windows user credential store.

* Keeps the process running

This is absolutely key, it keeps alive the process even after the script has finished, so you can easily attach a debugger / profiler to it when the script isn't running, then start the script again. It also means you can use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetData to cache expensive setup if you're trying to profile something.

* Quickly switch between expression / statements / program mode

It'll intelligently work out if you've written a single expression vs multi-line statements, and you can switch to "program" and it'll wrap what you've done so far in a Main stub.

* Easily define default App.Config files, default namespaces, default nuget packages.

After finally getting a fiddly setup working, there's a "Use as default for new queries" button which is very convenient. Also the "clone query" functionality is similarly useful for copying not just the C# text but all the background namespace declarations, references, config, etc.

And that's about it. I barely use the database connection and exploration side, but I do use it daily for hooking into DLLs to quickly test changes to our internal projects.

[+] DeathArrow|1 year ago|reply
I used Basic, Pascal, C++, C, Javascript, Python, Java and C#.

C# is my favorite language because is relatively easy to write something without having to write a lot and there's relatively little boiler plate and ceremony.

On top of its imperative foundations there were added some functional capabilities that are integrated very well.

What is als likeable is there are a ton of learning materials for those who are interested, a ton of libraries and frameworks and the community being helpful.

Also, C# can be used in about every domain, web backend, web fronted, desktop, small utilities, games, mobile and even microcontrollers.

What I dislike about C# is that every file is also an object and I rather like a less OOP approach.

Also, there are features the community asked for years, like algebraic types and even though people working on the language implementation recognized their importance, they still didn't find their way in the language.

My favorite update to C# would be if it doesn't force so much object oriented workflow. Even C++ lets you work in a procedural way.

Another.NET language I like is F# but I didn't invest much time in it because I don't have where to use it for work.

[+] Akronymus|1 year ago|reply
> Another.NET language I like is F# but I didn't invest much time in it because I don't have where to use it for work.

F# mostly replaced bash/powershell for me.

[+] spicyusername|1 year ago|reply
I just started learning C# while tinkering with Monogame.

It's a really nice language to use, I'm quite surprised.

[+] pjc50|1 year ago|reply
C# is an absolutely excellent language, and continues to gradually improve.

Because I had to check this myself: Monogame is not tied to mono! It claims to support dotnet 8, so it looks suitably current and maintained.

It is annoying that Microsoft had their own perfectly adequate game framework which they binned at one of the transitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA

[+] hoofedear|1 year ago|reply
C# is really an awesome language, it’s come such a long way. I know it used to be a pain and not very cross-platform friendly, but nowadays it’s a dream. Shoutout to Rider as the best IDE for it lol
[+] tiptup300|1 year ago|reply
I've done C# for a while and I really love what can be done with DI & reflection for cool cross cutting abilities.

I want to branch out to native stuff like C++ & Rust for memory management stuff, but they don't seem to come close in terms of the reflection abilities or probably the function is there, but just a nightmare to work with.

Anybody have any thoughts/opinions?

[+] utensil4778|1 year ago|reply
C# was my first language so I am biased, but it continues to be my favorite language out of any I've tried.
[+] munchler|1 year ago|reply
Give F# a try as well if you have some time. It's even better, and can do anything C# can do!
[+] mhh__|1 year ago|reply
The core is very good, the OOP aspects can be really quite poor.

Let me write a function without 50 tokens of boilerplate!

[+] waldrews|1 year ago|reply
How does it compare with LinqPad, polyglot notebooks, csi.exe?
[+] aragonite|1 year ago|reply
The author has some comments on this on GitHub:

https://github.com/waf/CSharpRepl?tab=readme-ov-file#compari...

Even though it's not as feature-rich as linqpad's Dump() method, personally I find the ability to pretty print any object ("detailed view"[1]) by pressing ctrl+enter really convenient. E.g. try typing in

  new Uri("https://news.ycombinator.com")
(without semicolon), then pressing ctrl+enter.

[1] https://github.com/waf/CSharpRepl?tab=readme-ov-file#:~:text...

[+] classified|1 year ago|reply
Is it capable of UTF-8? I couldn't for the life of me get the F# REPL to read UTF-8.
[+] yau8edq12i|1 year ago|reply
What do you mean? With dotnet fsi? I just tried it and it reads UTF8 just fine, at least in windows terminal.
[+] Pathogen-David|1 year ago|reply
It doesn't change the output encoding by default, but if you manually set it to UTF8 it works. (IE: Console.OutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;)

That might be all you need to fix the F# REPL too.

[+] dgan|1 year ago|reply
Can't stop reading it as "shrapnel", especially with "intellisense" just below