Code Syntax Style: Optional Parentheses
Last modified: 21 July 2022In many cases, parentheses in expressions are optional. Sometimes they help you clarify precedence of operations — for example if ((a & b) | c), sometimes, however, they do not help at all and just add up to dead code — var d = a + (b + c);. ReSharper will help you define where optional parentheses are helpful to you, and then either clean up the redundant parenthesis or automatically add missing ones where necessary.
ReSharper helps you arrange optional parentheses in the existing code and takes your preferences into account when it produces new code with code completion and code generation features, applies code templates and performs refactorings.
Enforce preferences for optional parentheses
By default, ReSharper highlights parentheses that do not clarify operation precedence and helps remove them:
Similarly, it notifies you about non-obvious operation precedences and suggests adding optional parentheses to make the code more readable:
Another option to enforce your preferences for optional parentheses in a bulk mode is code cleanup. You can either run code cleanup with one of the built-in profiles Full Cleanup or Reformat & Apply Syntax Style, or create and run a custom profile solely targeted at your specific task as described below.
note
Preferences for optional parentheses are not applied to generated code. By default, ReSharper provides the list of file masks and regions for generated code typically produced by Visual Studio (for example, Windows Form Designer-generated code). If necessary, you can edit the list of generated items on the Code Inspection | Generated Code page of ReSharper options (Alt+R, O).
Apply preferences for optional parentheses with code cleanup
Select ReSharper | Options from the main menu or press Alt+R O.
Go to the cleanup profiles settings page: Code Editing | Code Cleanup | Profiles.
Create a new profile as described in the Create a new custom cleanup profile section. In the Selected profile settings section for the new profile tick the Remove redundant parentheses and Add parentheses to explicitly specify operation precedence check boxes.
Click Save in the Options dialog to apply the modifications and let ReSharper choose where to save them, or save the modifications to a specific settings layer using the Save To list. For more information, see manage and share resharper settings.
Select the scope where you want to enforce your preferences:
Set the caret anywhere in the file to enforce your preferences to the file.
Select one or more items in the Solution Explorer to enforce your preferences in the files under these nodes and their child items.
Do one of the following:
Press Ctrl+E C or choose ReSharper | Edit | Cleanup Code... from the main menu .
Right-click anywhere in the text editor or right-click the selection and choose Cleanup Code in the context menu.
In the Code Cleanup dialog that opens, select the newly created profile .
Click Run. ReSharper will enforce your preferences in the selected scope.
If you want to arrange optional parentheses without opening the Code Cleanup dialog to choose a profile, you can bind the created profile to the silent cleanup and run it by pressing Ctrl+E F. You can also create a custom cleanup profile that would combine applying optional parentheses style with other code style tasks.
To apply preferences for optional parentheses together with all other formatting and syntax style rules to the selected code block, Alt+Enter and choose Reformat and cleanup | Reformat & apply syntax style.
You can arrange optional parentheses every time you save changes in a file to make sure that your edits always comply with your code style.
Automatically arrange optional parentheses on saving changes
Select ReSharper | Options from the main menu or press Alt+R O.
Go to the cleanup profiles settings page: Code Editing | Code Cleanup | Profiles.
Select your custom Code Cleanup profile and click Set as default (the default profile is also used for silent cleanup).
Go to the Code Editing | Code Cleanup | General options page and select Automatically run cleanup when saving a file.
Optionally, you can restrict automatic cleanup to specific files by a file mask. You can also select Only changed parts of file to make sure that cleanup is applied to the code affected by your changes, and the rest of the code in the file is not modified.
Click Save in the dialog to apply the modifications and let ReSharper choose where to save them, or save the modifications to a specific settings layer using the Save To list. For more information, see manage and share resharper settings.
The next time you finish editing and save the file (Ctrl+S) or all files (Ctrl+Shift+S), ReSharper will clean up the affected files using the selected profile. If the default cleanup profile is not selected, ReSharper will prompt you choose one of the profiles.
Configure preferences for optional parentheses
Your optional parentheses preferences are saved using the mechanism of layer-based settings. Among other things, this mechanism allows you to maintain different preferences for different solutions as well as to keep these preferences under a VCS and automatically share them with your team members.
Go to the Code Editing | C# | Syntax Style page of ReSharper options (Alt+R, O).
In the Parentheses category, specify whether to remove redundant parentheses and which operations should be considered as not having obvious precedence.
The Notify with selectors in the right column allow you to set severity levels of code inspections detecting code that differs from your preferences.
Click Save in the Options dialog to apply the modifications and let ReSharper choose where to save them, or save the modifications to a specific settings layer using the Save To list. For more information, see manage and share resharper settings.
tip
Code style features that only change whitespaces, tabs, and line breaks are configurable in formatting preferences.