Post
Ask Question

Basic facts and Tidbits in .NET Framework

Following are some of the basic facts and tidbits in the .NET framework which we come across very frequently while writing applications. The following article would be more of a use to the beginners in .NET

Types in .NET :

The following types have been actually implemented as STRUCTS in .NET framework

  • bool
  • int
  • boolean
  • byte
  • char
  • float
  • decimal
  • datetime
  • double

The below given types have been implemented as CLASSES in the .NET framework

  • Enum
  • String
  • Stringbuilder

The “int” that we define is “System.Int32”. ‘int' is an alias for System.Int32 and similarly other data types also have their own aliases. So the below declarations are identical
Int i = 0; is same as

System.Int32 i = 0;

Boolean and Bool are identical and any one of them can be used. Boolean is the actual type and ‘bool' is just an alias for Boolean

Console Class :

The console class which is extensively used in console applications is a static class which facilitates basic input,output streams from the console. We can input and output data in console applications with the help of console class.

TextReader a = Console.In;

TextWriter b = Console.Out;

string str = a.ReadLine();

b.WriteLine(str);

Convert Class :

This is again a static class. We can convert an object of one data type to another using the Convert class, provided the conversion is allowed. Suppose we want to convert some object into a string, we can use Convert.ToString(); method.
Type Convert.ToString( and we can check for the overloads of the methods whether our object can be provided as an input to this method to convert it to string.

Directory, DirectoryInfo, File, FileInfo : These classes can be used to work with the file system on the local or a remote computer.

Some_Object.Equals() method can be used to check for the equality between the objects. The method returns a Boolean value.

Math Class :

Static class MATH provides us with utility functions that can be directly used for mathematical operations.
Eg Math.Max(number1,number2) – returns us the maximum of the two numbers. There are several other functions in Math class. You can go through them by typing “Math.”.

Creating new GUID :

We can create a new Guid programmatically
 

Guid newGuid = Guid.NewGuid();

Console.WriteLine(newGuid);

String and stringbuilder classes let us work with strings in .NET framework. The String is an immutable object.

Suppose we concatenate two strings str1 and str2 using “str1+str2” statement.

Here the str2 in NOT simply added to the str1 object. Instead the concatenation is done in a new object and the existing objects are destroyed. This becomes a costly operation if there are a lot of concatenations involved in the program.

StringBuilder is a mutable string. We can use the ‘Append' method on a string builder object to concatenate strings. This does not create a new object for concatenated string but it simply adds the string ahead of the existing object.