Basic Building Blocks of C#

Before we study the basic building blocks of the C# programming language, let us look

at a bare minimum C# program structure so that we can take it as a reference in

upcoming chapters.

CreatingHelloWorldProgram

A C# program consists of the following parts:

• Namespace declaration
• A class
• Class methods
• Class attributes
• The Main method
• Statements and Expressions
• Comments.

let us look at a simple code that prints the words “Hello World”:

using System;

namespace FirstApplication
{
       class HelloWorld
       {
             static void Main(string[] args)
             {
                   /* Console App Example in C# */
                   Console.WriteLine("Hello World");
                   Console.ReadKey();
             }
       }
}

When this code is executed, it will produce the following result:

Hello World

Let us look at the various parts of the given program:

• The first line of the program using System; – the using keyword is used to
• include the System namespace in the program. A program generally has
• multiple using statements.
• The next line has the namespace declaration. A namespace is a collection of classes. The HelloWorldApplication namespace contains the class HelloWorld.
• The next line has a class declaration, the class HelloWorld contains the data and method definitions that your program uses. Classes generally contain multiple methods. Methods define the behavior of the class. However, the HelloWorld class has only one method Main.
• The next line defines the Main method, which is the entry point for all C# programs. The Main method states what the class does when executed.
• The next line /…/ is ignored by the compiler and it is put to add comments in the program.
• The Main method specifies its behavior with the statement Console.WriteLine(“Hello World”);
• WriteLine is a method of the Console class defined in the System namespace.
• This statement causes the message “Hello, World!” to be displayed on the screen.
• The last line Console.ReadKey(); is for the VS.NET Users. This makes the program wait for a key press and it prevents the screen from running and closing quickly when the program is launched from Visual Studio. NET.
• It is worth noting the following points:
• C# is case-sensitive.
• All statements and expressions must end with a semicolon (;).
• The program execution starts with the Main method.
• Unlike Java, the program file name could be different from the class name.