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C #   2 0 0 8   L A N G U A G E   F E AT U R E S

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---

// takes place here...

}

}

We would now find that the full scope of the CarLocator class is taken into account at compile

time (as shown in the following approximate C# code):

internal class CarLocator

{

public bool CarAvailableInZipCode(string zipCode)

{

this.VerifyDuplicates(zipCode);

return true;

}

private void VerifyDuplicates(string make)

{

}

}

As you can see, when a method is defined with the partial keyword, the compiler will deter-

mine if it should be emitted into the assembly based on whether the method has a method body or

is simply an empty signature. If there is no method body, all traces of the method (invocations,

metadata descriptions, prototypes) are stripped out during the compilation cycle.

In some ways, C# partial methods are a strongly typed version of 

conditional code compilation

(via the #if, #elif, #else, and #endif preprocessor directives; see Chapter 12). The major difference,

however, is that a partial method will be completely ignored during the compilation cycle (regard-

less of build settings) if there is not a supporting implementation.