Pattern Matching in .NET 7

With the advent of newer .NET versions, C# developers have been introduced to an incredibly powerful feature called Pattern Matching. This feature, inspired by functional programming paradigms, provides developers with a novel and expressive way to write conditional statements, thereby making their code more readable, maintainable, and efficient. In this blog post, we will explore pattern matching in .NET 7, delve into its practical applications with detailed examples, and discuss the benefits of using pattern matching in clean architecture.

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Understanding Pattern Matching

Pattern Matching is an essential feature in functional programming that has found its way into C#. With the introduction of .NET 7, this feature has been expanded with new capabilities, providing a more expressive and concise way to test and extract data from an object.

Traditional object-oriented programming languages use type checking and casting to test and manipulate an object. However, pattern matching in .NET 7 provides a more expressive approach. It allows you to test the shape of the data rather than its type, leading to more expressive and readable code.

object o = "Hello, world!";
if (o is string s)
{
    Console.WriteLine(s.ToUpper());  // Output: HELLO, WORLD!
}