Tiger

.NET Book Zero
What the C or C++ Programmer Needs to Know about C# and the .NET Framework
by Charles Petzold www.charlespetzold.com

Version 1.1, January 1, 2007

© Charles Petzold, 2006-2007

.NET Book Zero

Charles Petzold

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Why This Book? ................................................................ 2 Chapter 2. Why .NET?........................................................................ 5 Chapter 3. Runtimes and SDKs .......................................................... 7 Chapter 4. Edit, Compile, Run, Disassemble .................................... 11 Chapter 5. Strings and the Console .................................................. 22 Chapter 6. Primitive Data Types ....................................................... 51 Chapter 7.Operators and Expressions ............................................. 68 Chapter 8. Selection and Iteration .................................................... 75 Chapter 9. The Stack and the Heap .................................................. 83 Chapter 10. Arrays ........................................................................... 88 Chapter 11. Methods and Fields....................................................... 95 Chapter 12. Exception Handling ......................................................108 Chapter 13. Classes, Structures, and Objects ..................................117 Chapter 14. Instance Methods .........................................................126 Chapter 15. Constructors ................................................................135Chapter 16. Concepts of Equality ....................................................144 Chapter 17. Fields and Properties....................................................153 Chapter 18. Inheritance ..................................................................166 Chapter 19. Virtuality .....................................................................175 Chapter 20. Operator Overloading...................................................191 Chapter 21. Interfaces .....................................................................202 Chapter 22. Interoperability ............................................................206 Chapter 23. Dates and Times ..........................................................210 Chapter 24. Events and Delegates...................................................221 Chapter 25. Files and Streams ........................................................226 Chapter 26. String Theory ...............................................................250 Chapter 27. Generics ......................................................................253 Chapter 28. Nullable Types .............................................................259

Version1.1

Page 1

.NET Book Zero

Charles Petzold

Chapter 1. Why This Book?
Some books have a Chapter Zero. That‘s the chapter with the stuff the reader needs to know before reading Chapter One. Chapter Zero might be a refresher course in subjects the reader once knew but has now forgotten, or it might be a quick-and-dirty summary of prerequisites for the rest of the book. This book originated as aChapter Zero in my book Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (Microsoft Press, 2006), which is about the new Windows client programming platform that‘s part of Microsoft .NET 3.0 and Microsoft Windows Vista. I wanted Applications = Code + Markup to focus almost exclusively on the Windows Presentation Foundation. I knew there was enough to coverwithout going into the basics of general .NET programming and C#. Yet, I wasn‘t sure how much .NET my readers would know. I started writing a Chapter Zero for the book that would summarize all the basics of .NET and C# for the C and C++ programmers who might be coming to .NET for the very first time. It soon became evident that this Chapter Zero would be very long. It occurred to me that I could...