Csharp Program Structure
Csharp Program Structure
Before we study 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.
Namespace declaration
A class
Class methods
Class attributes
A Main method
Statements and Expressions
Comments
Let us look at a simple code that prints the words "Hello World":
using System;
namespace HelloWorldApplication
{
class HelloWorld
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
/* my first program in C# */
Console.WriteLine("Hello World");
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
When this code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:
Hello World
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 " HelloWorld "
;
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.
C# is case sensitive.
Unlike Java, program file name could be different from the class name.
Click the Run button or press F5 key to execute the project. A Command Prompt window
appears that contains the line Hello World.
You can compile a C# program by using the command-line instead of the Visual Studio IDE:
Open the command prompt tool and go to the directory where you saved the file.
If there are no errors in your code, the command prompt takes you to the next line and
generates helloworld.exe executable file.
You can see the output Hello World printed on the screen.
Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/HTML-CSS/jax.js