Programming Articles - Page 1188 of 3363

Assembly contains all the compiled types in your application along with their Intermediate Language (IL) code. It is also the basic unit of deployment in .NET. In the latest versions of .NET, i.e. .NET Core, an assembly is a file with a .dll extension, which stands for Dynamic Link Library.There are primarily four items in an assembly.Compiled TypesThe compiled IL code for all the types in your application.Assembly ManifestContains the metadata needed by the Common Language Runtime, such as the dependencies and versions that this DLL references.Its purpose is to describe the assembly to the runtime via the assembly's data, ... Read More

The .NET streams architecture provides a consistent programming interface for reading and writing across different I/O types. It includes classes for manipulating files and directories on disk, as well as specialized streams for compression, named pipes, and memory-mapped files.The streaming architecture in .NET relies on a backing store and adapters.Backing StoreIt represents a store of data, such as a file or a network connection. It can act as either a source from which bytes can be read sequentially or a destination to which bytes can be written sequentially.The Stream class in .NET exposes the backing store to programmers. It exposes ... Read More

Variables of value types directly contain the values. When you assign one value type variable to another, each variable associates with a different storage location in memory. Hence, Changing the value of one value type variable doesn't affect the value in the second variable.Similarly, when you pass an instance of a value type to a method, the compiler copies the memory associated with the argument to a new location associated with the parameter. Any changes to the parameter won't affect the original value. Since memory is copied for value types, they should be small (typically, less than 16 bytes).All the ... Read More

In C#, strings are immutable. That means you cannot modify a string once it's created. Any modification to the string returns a new string that contains the modification, leaving the original string intact.string word = "aaabbbccc"; string newWord = word.Replace('b', 'd'); Console.WriteLine(word); // prints aaabbbccc Console.WriteLine(newWord); // prints aaadddcccStringBuilder class represents a string-like object that can be modified, i.e. a mutable string of characters. It's implemented differently than the string type, which represents an immutable string of characters.As modifying a string object creates a copy, repeatedly modifying string objects can incur a performance penalty. For small repetitions it's negligible, but ... Read More

A C# program compiles to a DLL assembly that contains the compiled C# code along with the metadata for the runtime, and other resources. C# provides a reflection API that lets us inspect the metadata and compiled code at runtime.Using reflection, it's possible to −Access the assembly metadata for all types inside the assemblyObtain a list of types and their members (methods, properties, etc.)Dynamically invoke the type members at runtime.Instantiate objects by only providing their nameBuild assembliesIn a traditional program, when you compile the source code to the machine code, the compiler removes all the metadata about the code. However, ... Read More

.NET contains a lot of namespaces and many more, if you include the third-party libraries. However, there are a few that you will use over and over. Here are the twenty that will get you through 80% of the common, recurring programming problems.SystemContains the most fundamental types. These include commonly used classes, structures, enums, events, interfaces, etc.System.TextContains classes that represent ASCII and Unicode character encodings. Classes for converting blocks of characters to and from blocks of bytes.System.Text.RegularExpressionsProvides regular expression functionality.System.LinqProvides classes and interfaces that support queries that use Language-Integrated Query (LINQ).System.XML.LinqContains the classes for LINQ to XML. LINQ to XML ... Read More

Events are a simplified pattern that uses delegates. In C#, all delegates have the multicast capability, i.e., an instance of a delegate can represent not just a single method but a list of methods. For example −Exampledelegate int Transformer(int x); static void Main(){    Transformer perform = x =>{       int result = x * x;       Console.WriteLine(result);       return result;    };    perform += x =>{       int result = x * x * x;       Console.WriteLine(result);       return result;    };    perform(2); // prints ... Read More

In C#, both the const and readonly keywords are used to define immutable values which cannot be modified once they are declared. However, there are some important differences between the two.constThe const modifier declares the constant values that are known at compile-time and do not change, i.e. they are immutable. In C#, you can mark only the built-in types as const. User-defined types such as classes, structs, etc. cannot be const. Also, class member types such as methods, properties, or events cannot be marked as constants.You must initialize the constants during declaration.class Period{    public const int hours = 12; ... Read More

C# has the following three operators to deal with the null values −null-coalescing operator (??)Allows you to get the value of a variable if it's not null, alternatively specifying a default value that can be used.It replaces the following expression in C# −string resultOne = value != null ? value : "default_value";with the following expression −string resultTwo = value ?? "default_value";Here is an example that illustrates this.Exampleusing System; class Program{    static void Main(){       string input = null;       string choice = input ?? "default_choice";       Console.WriteLine(choice); // default_choice       string ... Read More

An interface defines a contract that will be implemented by a class or a struct. It can contain methods, properties, events, and indexers. An interface is similar to a class except that it doesn't hold any data and only specifies the behavior it can do (or more accurately, the class that implements it can do).A class can implement one or more interfaces. To implement an interface member, the class should have a public member with the same method definition as the interface member, i.e. same name and signature.For example, IComparer is an interface defined in the System.Collections namespace that defines ... Read More