I am surprised how many people still don't know they can alias namespaces using the C# keyword using. Resharper automatically adds this syntax for me and it seems like 1 person a month says that didn't know.
1: using Short = Company.Project.Task.Function;
The reason for this post; however, is to show another usage of the C# keyword using. I saw this and thought it was worth your time. When using generics the < and > can become unreadable at times and with a little help from "using" we can make it look nice. Let's look at an example:
1: Dictionary<int, string> idNameMapping;
Or we might have even more complex data structures where Id is mapped to another dictionary:
1: Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, int>> complexIdMapping;
Well that doesn't look so great and if we had more generics then it would look even worse. Now with a little help from "using" we can clean it up.
1: using Item = System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<string, string>;
2:
3: namespace wijix
4: {
5: using Records = Dictionary<int, Item>;
6: public class Controller
7: {
8: Records recordDictionary = new Records();
9: }
10: }
Now... I may never do this in my code but it was interesting to know.