C# !Conditional attribute?

First, having the Conditional attribute is not equivalent to having #if inside the method. Consider:

ShowDebugString(MethodThatTakesAges());

With the real behaviour of ConditionalAttribute, MethodThatTakesAges doesn't get called - the entire call including argument evaluation is removed from the compiler.

Of course the other point is that it depends on the compile-time preprocessor symbols at the compile time of the caller, not of the method :)

But no, I don't believe there's anything which does what you want here. I've just checked the C# spec section which deals with conditional methods and conditional attribute classes, and there's nothing in there suggesting there's any such mechanism.

Nope.

Instead, you can write

#if !ShowDebugString
[Conditional("FALSE")]
#endif

Note that unlike [Conditional], this will be determined by the presence of the symbol in your assembly, not in your caller's assembly.

True we can't 'NOT' ConditionalAttribute, but we can 'NOT' the condition as presented below.

// at the begining of the code before uses
#if DUMMY
#undef NOT_DUMMY
#else
#define NOT_DUMMY
#endif

// somewhere in class
[Conditional("NOT_DUMMY")]
public static void ShowDebugStringNOTDUMMY(string s)
{
  Debug.Print("ShowDebugStringNOTDUMMY");
}


[Conditional("DUMMY")]
public static void ShowDebugStringDUMMY(string s)
{
  Debug.Print("ShowDebugStringDUMMY");
}

hope this helps you solve your problem ;)