C# Find All References

Program can become very complex and huge. One of the best features in Visual Studio 2010 for alleviating this problem is the Find All References command. This feature provides an instant search command for whatever identifier or type you select.

This Visual Studio article shows how to use the Find All References feature.

Example

This is the program that is shown in the screenshot above. You can see that the A method is called in two places and it is defined in one place. When you right-click on A and select Find All References, Visual Studio 2010 will locate the reference at line 5 (Column 9); line 15 (Column 9); and the definition at line 9 (Column 17).

Program that you can find all references on [C#]

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
	A();
	B();
    }

    static void A()
    {
    }

    static void B()
    {
	A();
    }
}

References to A

C:\...\Program.cs - (15, 9) : A();
C:\...\Program.cs - (5, 9) : A();
C:\...\Program.cs - (9, 17) : static void A()

Find Symbol Results. In the Find Symbol Results pane, you can additionally right-click on an entry and select Go To Reference or Go To Definition depending on what type of result it is.

Summary

Find All References is one of my favorite commands in Visual Studio 2010. If you want to see if a method is unused, use Find All References—if no references other than the definition exist, you can probably delete it. Find All References can also be used on type names such as "string" or "Dictionary"; custom identifiers are also searched.