When I was working on the code folding patch to MonoDevelop, I had curious problem. I wished that the buffer returned only the code to everything and the folded version to some internal methods I used.
The problem could only be solved implementing an internal method that I invoked to return the folded version. Now, I found a new way, that not only solves my problem but also introduces a concept of Intelligent Objects – objects that behave according to the context, or the callers if you will.
Pretty simple:
System.Diagnostics.StackTrace stack = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace (true);
System.Diagnostics.StackFrame stackf = new System.Diagnostics.StackFrame (1);
if (stackf.GetMethod ().DeclaringType == typeof (ABC))
{ ... } else { ...}
This code analyses the stack thus introducing the concept I wanted, to behave according to the caller.
This can be even more useful in other cases, for instance, singleton classes that need to pass the ‘master’ object to each child – using this we can skip that requirement and access directly the factory that created the object and avoid all the extra code the usual approach involves.
