Code inspection: Introduce optional parameters (non-private accessibility)

If the single purpose of an overloaded function is to call the 'implementation' function with default values for some arguments, optional arguments can be used in the 'implementation' function instead of this overload.

This inspection reports such overloads and suggests removing them to make the corresponding parameters of the 'implementation' functions optional.

            
public void Foo(object value)
{
  Foo(value, true);
}

public void Foo(object value, bool flag)
{
  //implementation
}

        

            
public void Foo(object value, bool flag = true)
{
  //implementation
}

For the solution-wide inspection to work, you need to enable at least one of the following:

Simplified global usage checking: select Show unused non-private type members when solution-wide analysis is off on the Code Inspection | Settings page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.
Solution-wide analysis: select Enable solution-wide analysis on the Code Inspection | Settings page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

Note that even if the reported function has no direct usages in your solution, there could be cases where it is used indirectly — for example, via reflection — or it could just be designed as public API. In all those cases, you would want to suppress the usage-checking inspection for the function in one of the following ways:

The recommended way is to decorate the implicitly used function with a code annotation attribute. There are two attributes for this purpose: [UsedImplicitly] and [PublicAPI], which are functionally similar, but let you and your teammates understand how the function is actually used.
You can also suppress usage-checking inspections with any custom attribute. To do so, mark the definition of that attribute with the [MeansImplicitUse] attribute.
And finally, you can suppress a specific usage-checking inspection as any other code inspection with a suppression comment or a suppression attribute.

Last modified: 04 June 2024