C# Reverse Engineering Preprocessing Directives

C# files may contain conditional code that needs to be handled by preprocessing directives during reverse engineering. A preprocessing directive is a command placed within the source code that directs the compiler to do a certain thing before the rest of the source code is parsed and compiled. The preprocessing directive has the following structure:

#directive symbol

Where # is followed by the name of the directive, and symbol is a conditional compiler constant used to select particular sections of code and exclude other sections.

In C#, symbols have no value, they can be true or false.

In the following example, the #if directive is used with symbol DEBUG to output a certain message when DEBUG symbol is true, if DEBUG symbol is false, another output message is displayed.

using System;
public class MyClass 
{
 public static void Main() 
 {

  #if DEBUG
   Console.WriteLine("DEBUG version");
  #else
   Console.WriteLine("RELEASE version");
  #endif
 }
}

You can declare a list of symbols for preprocessing directives. These symbols are parsed by preprocessing directives: if the directive condition is true the statement is kept, otherwise the statement is removed.

• C# Supported Preprocessing Directives
  The following directives are supported during preprocessing:
• Defining a C# Preprocessing Symbol
  You can define C# preprocessing symbols in the preprocessing tab of the reverse engineering dialog box.