You can use a Boolean trace switch to enable or disable messages based on their importance. Use the BooleanSwitch.Enabled property to get the current value of the switch.

You can enable or disable a System.Diagnostics.BooleanSwitch through the application configuration file and then use the configured System.Diagnostics.BooleanSwitch value in your application. Alternately, you can create a System.Diagnostics.BooleanSwitch in your code and set the BooleanSwitch.Enabled property directly to instrument a specific section of code.

To configure a System.Diagnostics.BooleanSwitch, edit the configuration file that corresponds to the name of your application. Within this file, you can add or remove a switch, set a switch's value, or clear all the switches previously set by the application. The configuration file should be formatted like the following example.

<configuration>
  <system.diagnostics>
    <switches>
      <add name="mySwitch" value="1"/>
    </switches>
  </system.diagnostics>
</configuration>

This example configuration section defines a System.Diagnostics.BooleanSwitch with the Switch.DisplayName property set to mySwitch and the BooleanSwitch.Enabled value set to true. Within your application, you can use the configured switch value by creating a System.Diagnostics.BooleanSwitch with the same name, as shown in the following code example.

code reference: Classic BooleanSwitch.BooleanSwitch Example#2

By default, the BooleanSwitch.Enabled property is set using the value specified in the configuration file. Configure the switch with a value of 0 to set the BooleanSwitch.Enabled property to false; configure the switch with a nonzero value to set the BooleanSwitch.Enabled property to true. If the System.Diagnostics.BooleanSwitch constructor cannot find initial switch settings in the configuration file, the BooleanSwitch.Enabled property of the new switch is set to false by default.

You must enable tracing or debugging to use a switch. The following syntax is compiler specific. If you use compilers other than C# or Visual Basic, refer to the documentation for your compiler.

• To enable debugging in C#, add the /d:DEBUG flag to the compiler command line when you compile your code, or you can add #define DEBUG to the top of your file. In Visual Basic, add the /d:DEBUG=True flag to the compiler command line.

• To enable tracing in C#, add the /d:TRACE flag to the compiler command line when you compile your code, or add #define TRACE to the top of your file. In Visual Basic, add the /d:TRACE=True flag to the compiler command line.

For more information on instrumenting your application, see System.Diagnostics.Debug and System.Diagnostics.Trace. For more information about configuring and using trace switches, see Trace Switches.