Software update: Linqpad 5.36.03

Linqpad focuses on developers who work with Microsoft’s .Net framework. The name points directly in the direction of Linq but it can also handle C#, F#, VB.Net and SQL. It is available in a limited freeware edition, and can be used with various licenses be provided with more functionality, such as autocompletion and a full integration with NuGet. The developers recently released version 5.36.03 with the following changes:

NEW/IMPROVED:

• There’s now a built-in interactive RegEx utility! Press Ctrl+Shift+F1, or choose the option on the Help menu. The utility is implemented as a LINQPad script – click on the built-in samples to view.
• LINQPad now includes a set of HTML controls for writing interactive queries. Unlike WPF and Windows Forms controls, these render in the same output panel as your results. To use them, just instantiate and dump them:
  // All the controls live in the LINQPad.Controls namespace.
  var txt = new TextBox().Dump();
  txt.TextInput += (sender, args) => $”You typed {txt.Text}”.Dump();Click here for an interactive tutorial.
• The NuGet search engine now recognizes SemVer2 prerelease packages, and uses a new faster API.
• You can now reference NuGet packages that include only native DLLs, such as Microsoft.ChakraCore. To invoke the native methods, set the query type to ‘C# Program’ and declare the methods that you want to call prefixed with the appropriate DllImport attributes.
• LINQPad now identifies NuGet packages with duplicate extension attributes in Content_Types.xml, and automatically removes the duplicates so that the package loader will not throw an InvalidOperationException.
• C# 7.3 is now supported.
• When connecting to SQL Azure, you can now opt for Universal Active Directory authentication, with support for multi-factor authentication.
• There are new methods in LINQPad’s Util class to load/save strings or byte arrays to a central machine store (shared between queries). These methods are Util.SaveString, Util.SaveBytes, Util.LoadString, and Util.LoadBytes.
• LINQPad’s embedded ILSpy has now been updated to V4. You can now enable or disable compiler optimizations on a per-query basis, by starting your query with the following code:
  #LINQPad optimize+ // To force optimizations on for this query
  #LINQPad optimize- // To force optimizations off for this query
• In the SQL connection dialog, when you choose the ‘Display all databases in TreeView’ option, a checkbox now appears to lets you choose whether or not to automatically populate the database list on startup.
• (F#) When using type providers, LINQPad now properly escapes spaces in member names in autocompletion listings.
• (F#) There’s now an option in Edit | Preferences | Advanced > Execution to force LINQPad to always use its internal F# compiler, even when F# has been installed on the computer. This can be useful when F# has been partially or improperly installed.
• When using LPRun to execute scripts via the command-line, you can now control the %errorlevel% explicitly – either by returning an integer value from Main or by setting Environment.ExitCode. As before, if your script throws an exception, the %errorlevel% will be 1.
• LINQPad 5.36 supports the latest Entity Framework Core driver, which interoperates with all versions of EF 2.x. Support for .NET Standard assemblies has been further improved, with automatic resolution of NuGet dependencies listed in the .deps.json file.

FIXED:

• The debugger now steps correctly through F# programs.
• An error relating to resolving FSharp.Core.dll when disassembling F# programs has been fixed.
• Captured variables masked by local variables now display correctly in the Debug Locals window.
• When dumping a non-enumerable item to a grid, nullable bools no longer cause a formatting error.
• When displaying XML documentation summaries in autocompletion listings and tooltips, tags are no longer ignored.
• A performance problem in the editor caused by a large number of NuGet assemblies has been fixed.
• A bug in the handling of credentials in authenticated NuGet feeds has been fixed.
• Util.Cache can now be used reliably with very large objects.
• For users that have reported very slow autocompletion when running on Windows 10 with 3 monitors, this should now be fixed.
• This build includes a workaround for a .NET security issue†