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        /// <summary>Retrieves and removes an item from the list.</summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T">The type that the generic list contains.</typeparam>
        /// <param name="list">The list.</param>
        /// <param name="index">The index of the item to be pulled out of the list.</param>
        public static T PullItemAt<T>(this IList<T> list, int index)
        {
            var item = list[index];
            list.RemoveAt(index);
            return item;
        }

/// <summary>
/// Adds items to a <see cref="ObservableCollection{T}"/>.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T">The generic type that the generic observable collection stores.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The list where items will be added to.</param>
/// <param name="items">The items to be added.</param>
public static void AddRange<T>(this ObservableCollection<T> list, IEnumerable<T> items)
{
    foreach (var item in items)
    {
        list.Add(item);
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Tries to get a value from the generic list.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T">The type that the generic list contains.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The generic list reference.</param>
/// <param name="predicate">The predicate used to find the desired element.</param>
/// <param name="item">The item to be returned if the <see cref="predicate"/> argument finds a match.</param>
/// <returns>true if a item was found; otherwise false.</returns>
public static bool TryGet<T>(this IList<T> list, Func<T, bool> predicate, out T item)
{
    var result = list.Where(predicate).ToArray();
    item = result.FirstOrDefault();
    return result.Length != 0;
}

/// <summary>
/// Tries to get a value from the generic list.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T">The type that the generic list contains.</typeparam>
/// <typeparam name="S">The type that the selector function will return.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The generic list reference.</param>
/// <param name="predicate">The predicate used to find the desired element.</param>
/// <param name="selector">The selector function used to retrieve a value from the matched item. determined by the <see cref="predicate"/> argument.</param>
/// <param name="item">The item to be returned if the <see cref="predicate"/> argument finds a match.</param>
/// <returns>true if a item was found; otherwise false.</returns>
public static bool TryGet<T, S>(this IList<T> list, Func<T, bool> predicate, Func<T, S> selector, out S item)
{
    var result = list.Where(predicate).ToArray();
    item = selector(result.FirstOrDefault());
    return result.Length != 0;
}

If you need your editor scripts to have the same functionality as “Assets->Show In Explorer” check out the cross platform method EditorUtility.RevealInFinder. This method is currently undocumented in Unity 5.2.1.


When writing editor scripts involving EditorWindow’s it is often important to initialize and cleanup your code when the window is shown and hidden. Specifically it is important to differentiate between the OnDisable and OnDestroy methods if you need to perform some kind of cleanup before the window is closed or disposed of. OnDestroy is called when the user closes the window, where as OnDisable is called after unity recompiles scripts. Think of the OnDestroy method as a close event for the window but the window still resides in memory, where the OnDisable method signals that the window is about to be unloaded from memory such as during a script recompile.

This differentiation is important when you need to save data to disk before the window is destroyed during a recompile. OnDestroy will not get called during recompile only OnDisable does. The OnEnable method is typically intended as a initialization method where you can load data related to the window.

I only wish the Unity team had made these methods more descriptive ala .NET window forms naming scheme. OnDestroy & OnDisable are not the most descriptive for what they do as well as being somewhat similar in spelling. But I digress.


public static string GetMD5HashFromFile(string fileName)
{
    byte[] retVal;
    using (var file = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open))
    {
        var md5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
        retVal = md5.ComputeHash(file);
    }

    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    for (var i = 0; i < retVal.Length; i++)
    {
        sb.Append(retVal[i].ToString("x2"));
    }

    return sb.ToString();
}

A simple performance test for comparing direct file property access or creating a FileInfo object.

The results show that if you are accessing more then one file property FileInfo is the way to go otherwise File.GetCreationTime and related methods have the same performance hit.

100 iterations of c:\windows
directValues –> 00:00:00.2900065
infoValues –> 00:00:00.1611554

void Main()
{
    var folder = "c:\\windows";
    var files = Directory.GetFiles(folder, "*.*", SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);

    var stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
    var directValues = 0l;
    var infoValues = 0l;
    for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
    {
        stopwatch.Restart();
        stopwatch.Start();
        foreach (var file in files)
        {
            var lastWriteTime = File.GetLastWriteTime(file);
            var creationTime = File.GetCreationTime(file);
        }

        stopwatch.Stop();
        directValues += stopwatch.ElapsedTicks;

        stopwatch.Restart();
        stopwatch.Start();
        foreach (var file in files)
        {
            var info = new FileInfo(file);
            var lastWriteTime = info.LastWriteTime;
            var creationTime = info.CreationTime;
        }

        stopwatch.Stop();
        infoValues += stopwatch.ElapsedTicks;

    }

    "100 iterations of c:\\windows".Dump();
    TimeSpan.FromTicks(directValues).Dump("directValues");
    TimeSpan.FromTicks(infoValues).Dump("infoValues");
}

Full repo available at https://bitbucket.org/createdbyx/codefarts.utilities-extension-methods-only

/// <summary>Determines whether a value in within a certain range.</summary>
/// <param name="value">The value.</param>
/// <param name="min">The minimum value.</param>
/// <param name="max">The maximum value.</param>
/// <returns>True if the value is in range.</returns>
public static bool IsInRange(this BaseType value, BaseType min, BaseType max)
{
    return value >= min && value <= max;
}

/// <summary>Determines whether a value in within a certain range.</summary>
/// <param name="value">The value.</param>
/// <param name="min">The minimum value.</param>
/// <param name="max">The maximum value.</param>
/// <param name="throwException">if set to <c>true</c> will throw a <see cref="IndexOutOfRangeException"/> if the value is out of range.</param>
/// <returns>True if the value is in range.</returns>
/// <exception cref="System.IndexOutOfRangeException">Is thrown if the value is out of range.</exception>
public static bool IsInRange(this BaseType value, BaseType min, BaseType max, bool throwException)
{
    if (!(value >= min && value <= max) && throwException)
    {
        throw new IndexOutOfRangeException();
    }

    return true;
}

/// <summary>Determines whether a value in within a certain range.</summary>
/// <param name="value">The value.</param>
/// <param name="min">The minimum value.</param>
/// <param name="max">The maximum value.</param>
/// <param name="throwException">if set to <c>true</c> will throw a <see cref="IndexOutOfRangeException"/> if the value is out of range.</param>
/// <param name="message">The message for the <see cref="IndexOutOfRangeException"/> if it is thrown.</param>
/// <returns>True if the value is in range.</returns>
/// <exception cref="System.IndexOutOfRangeException">Is thrown if the value is out of range.</exception>
public static bool IsInRange(this BaseType value, BaseType min, BaseType max, bool throwException, string message)
{
    if (!(value >= min && value <= max) && throwException)
    {
        throw new IndexOutOfRangeException(message);
    }

    return true;
}

When compiling your Unity games & applications to different platforms, there may be times when you need to get the location of special folder locations on the system that your app is running on.

The Environment.GetFolderPath method can be use to retrieve those specific folder locations. Below is a list of folder locations for both Windows 7 and Mac OS X. The source of this information is available here along with code examples.


Desktop (0)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/Desktop
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\Desktop

Programs (2)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Personal (5)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\Documents

MyDocuments (5)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\Documents

Favorites (6)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/Library/Favorites
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\Favorites

Startup (7)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Recent (8)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent

SendTo (9)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

StartMenu (11)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

MyMusic (13)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/Music
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\Music

DesktopDirectory (16)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/Desktop
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\Desktop

MyComputer (17)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 n/a

Templates (21)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/Templates
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates

ApplicationData (26)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/.config
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming

LocalApplicationData (28)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/username/.local/share (inside unity)
/Applications/Unity/MonoDevelop.app/Contents/MacOS/../Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/share
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local

InternetCache (32)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/Library/Caches
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

Cookies (33)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies

History (34)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History

CommonApplicationData (35)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /usr/share
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\ProgramData

System (37)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Windows\system32

ProgramFiles (38)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Applications
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Program Files
or C:\Program Files (x86)

MyPictures (39)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) /Users/yourname/Pictures
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Users\yourname\Pictures

CommonProgramFiles (43)
Apple.gif Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) n/a
Windows7.gif Windows 7 C:\Program Files\Common Files
or C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files

Full repo available at https://bitbucket.org/createdbyx/codefarts.utilities-extension-methods-only

/// <summary>
/// Clamps the specified value.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value">The value to be clamped.</param>
/// <param name="min">The minimum value.</param>
/// <param name="max">The maximum value.</param>
/// <returns>The clamped value.</returns>
public static BaseType Clamp(this BaseType value, BaseType min, BaseType max)
{
    if (value < min)
    {
        return min;
    }

    if (value > max)
    {
        return max;
    }

    return value;
}

Created by: X

Just another personal website in this crazy online world

Name of author Dean Lunz (aka Created by: X)
Computer programming nerd, and tech geek.
About Me -- Resume