I really hope I am not opening a flaming can of worms here, but how about don't chain methods at all? If you don't really need to do it that way and can call each method and check the return values before continuing then don't chain methods-- I think that would be preferred from a maintenance and clarity of code for your average programmer viewpoint. It may cost you more typing, but it is very helpful if you are stepping through the code to be able to put a breakpoint on any of those method calls as well as trace into them.