How to include line number and file name Console.WriteLine output?

Question

Is there a way to include line numbers and file name in C#'s Console.WriteLine function?

For example, on the line 115 of file "myClass.cs" I have the statement

Console.WriteLine("Hello world");

I would like the output to be:

[myClass.cs][115]:  Hello world 

Answer 1

If you're using C# 5, you can use caller information attributes to do this. For example:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;

public class Test
{
    static void Log(string message,
                    [CallerFilePath] string file = null,
                    [CallerLineNumber] int line = 0)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1}): {2}", Path.GetFileName(file), line, message);
    }
    
    static void Main()
    {
        Log("Hello, world");
        Log("This is the next line");
    }
}

Output:

Test.cs (16): Hello, world
Test.cs (17): This is the next line

Before C# 5, you're stuck with execution-time stack checking, which is less reliable due to inlining, and relies on the information being present at execution time. (It might not in a release build, for example, whereas the above will still work.)