Best practice of using the “out” keyword in C#

Question

I\'m trying to formalise the usage of the \"out\" keyword in c# for a project I\'m on, particularly with respect to any public methods. I can\'t seem to find any best practi

Answer 1

This is what the .NET Framework Developer's Guide has to say about out parameters:

Avoid using out or reference parameters.

Working with members that define out or reference parameters requires that the developer understand pointers, subtle differences between value types and reference types, and initialization differences between out and reference parameters.

But if you do use them:

Do place all out parameters after all of the pass-by-value and ref parameters (excluding parameter arrays), even if this results in an inconsistency in parameter ordering between overloads.

This convention makes the method signature easier to understand.