Introducing the C# language

This part of the book is about the C# language—the grammar and vocabulary that you will use every day to write the source code for your applications.

Programming languages have many similarities to human languages, except that in programming languages, you can make up your own words, just like Dr. Seuss!

In a book written by Dr. Seuss in 1950, If I Ran the Zoo, he states this:

”And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo, A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!”

Understanding language versions and features

This part of the book covers the C# programming language and is written primarily for beginners, so it covers the fundamental topics that all developers need to know, from declaring variables to storing data to how to define your own custom data types.

This book covers features of the C# language from version 1 up to the latest version, 11.

If you already have some familiarity with older versions of C# and are excited to find out about the new features in the most recent versions of C#, I have made it easier for you to jump around by listing language versions and their important new features below, along with the chapter number and topic title where you can learn about them.

Project COOL

Before the first release of C#, it had the codename COOL (C-like Object-Oriented Language).

C# 1

C# 1 was released in February 2002 and included all the important features of a statically typed object-oriented modern language, as you will see throughout Chapters 2 to 6.

C# 1.2

C# 1.2, with a few minor improvements like automatic disposal at the end of foreach statements, was released with Visual Studio .NET 2003.

C# 2

C# 2 was released in 2005 and focused on enabling strong data typing using generics, to improve code performance and reduce type errors, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Nullable value types	6	Making a value type nullable
Generics	6	Making types more reusable with generics

C# 3

C# 3 was released in 2007 and focused on enabling declarative coding with Language INtegrated Queries (LINQ) and related features like anonymous types and lambda expressions, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Implicitly typed local variables	2	Inferring the type of a local variable
LINQ	11	All topics in Chapter 11, Querying and Manipulating Data Using LINQ

C# 4

C# 4 was released in 2010 and focused on improving interoperability with dynamic languages like F# and Python, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Dynamic types	2	Storing dynamic types
Named/optional arguments	5	Optional parameters and named arguments

C# 5

C# 5 was released in 2012 and focused on simplifying asynchronous operation support by automatically implementing complex state machines while writing what looks like synchronous statements, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Simplified asynchronous tasks	2	Understanding async and await

C# 6

C# 6 was released in 2015 and focused on minor refinements to the language, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
static imports	2	Simplifying the usage of the console
Interpolated strings	2	Displaying output to the user
Expression-bodied members	5	Defining read-only properties

C# 7.0

C# 7.0 was released in March 2017 and focused on adding functional language features like tuples and pattern matching, as well as minor refinements to the language, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Binary literals and digit separators	2	Storing whole numbers
Pattern matching	3	Pattern matching with the if statement
out variables	5	Controlling how parameters are passed
Tuples	5	Combining multiple values with tuples
Local functions	6	Defining local functions

C# 7.1

C# 7.1 was released in August 2017 and focused on minor refinements to the language, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
async Main	2	Improving responsiveness for console apps
Default literal expressions	5	Setting fields with default literal
Inferred tuple element names	5	Inferring tuple names

C# 7.2

C# 7.2 was released in November 2017 and focused on minor refinements to the language, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Leading underscores in numeric literals	2	Storing whole numbers
Non-trailing named arguments	5	Optional parameters and named arguments
private protected access modifier	5	Understanding access modifiers
You can test == and != with tuple types	5	Comparing tuples

C# 7.3

C# 7.3 was released in May 2018 and focused on performance-oriented safe code that improves ref variables, pointers, and stackalloc. These are advanced and rarely needed for most developers, so they are not covered in this book.

C# 8

C# 8 was released in September 2019 and focused on a major change to the language related to null handling, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Switch expressions	3	Simplifying switch statements with switch expressions
Nullable reference types	6	Making a reference type nullable
Default interface methods	6	Understanding default interface methods

C# 9

C# 9 was released in November 2020 and focused on record types, refinements to pattern matching, and minimal-code projects, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Minimal-code console apps	1	Top-level programs
Target-typed new	2	Using target-typed new to instantiate objects
Enhanced pattern matching	5	Pattern matching with objects
Records	5	Working with records

C# 10

C# 10 was released in November 2021 and focused on features that minimize the amount of code needed in common scenarios, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Global namespace imports	2	Importing namespaces
Constant string literals	2	Formatting using interpolated strings
File-scoped namespaces	5	Simplifying namespace declarations
Record structs	6	Working with record struct types
ArgumentNullException.ThrowIfNull	6	Checking for null in method parameters

C# 11

C# 11 was released in November 2022 and focused on features that simplify your code, including the topics listed in the following table:

Feature	Chapter	Topic
Raw string literals	2	Understanding raw string literals
Line breaks in interpolated string expressions	2	Formatting using interpolated strings
Required properties	5	Requiring properties to be set during instantiation

Understanding C# standards

Over the years, Microsoft has submitted a few versions of C# to standards bodies, as shown in the following table:

C# version	ECMA standard	ISO/IEC standard
1.0	ECMA-334:2003	ISO/IEC 23270:2003
2.0	ECMA-334:2006	ISO/IEC 23270:2006
5.0	ECMA-334:2017	ISO/IEC 23270:2018

The ECMA standard for C# 6 is still a draft, and work on adding C# 7 features is progressing. Microsoft made C# open source in 2014. You can read the C# ECMA standard document at the following link: https://www.ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-334/.

More practically useful than the ECMA standards are the public GitHub repositories for making the work on C# and related technologies as open as possible, as shown in the following table:

Description	Link
C# language design	https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang
Compiler implementation	https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn
Standard to describe the language	https://github.com/dotnet/csharpstandard

Discovering your C# compiler versions

The .NET language compiler for C# and Visual Basic, also known as Roslyn, along with a separate compiler for F#, is distributed as part of the .NET SDK. To use a specific version of C#, you must have at least that version of the .NET SDK installed, as shown in the following table:

.NET SDK	Roslyn compiler	Default C# language
1.0.4	2.0 - 2.2	7.0
1.1.4	2.3 - 2.4	7.1
2.1.2	2.6 - 2.7	7.2
2.1.200	2.8 - 2.10	7.3
3.0	3.0 - 3.4	8.0
5.0	3.8	9.0
6.0	4.0	10.0
7.0	4.4	11.0

When you create class libraries, you can choose to target .NET Standard as well as versions of modern .NET. They have default C# language versions, as shown in the following table:

.NET Standard	C#
2.0	7.3
2.1	8.0

Although you must have a minimum version of the .NET SDK installed to have access to a specific compiler version, the projects that you create can target older versions of .NET and still use a modern compiler version. For example, if you have the .NET 7 SDK or later installed, then you could use C# 11 language features in a console app that targets .NET Core 3.0.

How to output the SDK version

Let’s see what .NET SDK and C# language compiler versions you have available:

1. On Windows, start Windows Terminal or Command Prompt. On macOS, start Terminal.
2. To determine which version of the .NET SDK you have available, enter the following command:

   dotnet --version
   

3. Note that the version at the time of publishing is 7.0.100, indicating that it is the initial version of the SDK without any bug fixes or new features yet, as shown in the following output:

   7.0.100
   

Enabling a specific language version compiler

Developer tools like Visual Studio and the dotnet command-line interface assume that you want to use the latest major version of a C# language compiler by default. Before C# 8.0 was released, C# 7.0 was the latest major version and was used by default. To use the improvements in a C# point release like 7.1, 7.2, or 7.3, you had to add a <LangVersion> configuration element to the project file, as shown in the following markup:

<LangVersion>7.3</LangVersion>

After the release of C# 11 with .NET 7, if Microsoft releases a C# 11.1 compiler and you want to use its new language features, then you will have to add a configuration element to your project file, as shown in the following markup:

<LangVersion>11.1</LangVersion>

Potential values for the <LangVersion> are shown in the following table:

LangVersion	Description
7, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8, 9, 10, 11	Entering a specific version number will use that compiler if it has been installed.
latestmajor	Uses the highest major number, for example, 7.0 in August 2019, 8 in October 2019, 9 in November 2020, 10 in November 2021, and 11 in November 2022.
latest	Uses the highest major and highest minor number, for example, 7.2 in 2017, 7.3 in 2018, 8 in 2019, and perhaps 11.1 in H1 2023.
preview	Uses the highest available preview version, for example, 11.0 in July 2022 with .NET 7.0 Preview 6 installed.

After creating a new project, you can edit the .csproj file and add the <LangVersion> element, as shown highlighted in the following markup:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net7.0</TargetFramework>
    <LangVersion>preview</LangVersion>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Switching the C# compiler for .NET 6

.NET 6 is an LTS release, so Microsoft must support developers who continue to use .NET 6 for six months longer than .NET 7. With .NET SDK 6.0.200 and later, which was released in February 2022, you can set the language version to preview to start exploring C# 11 language features. I expect that whatever version is released alongside .NET SDK 7.0.100 on November 8, 2022 (probably .NET SDK 6.0.500), it will default to using the C# 10 compiler unless you explicitly set the language version to 11, as shown highlighted in the following markup:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
    <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
    <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
    <LangVersion>11</LangVersion>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

If you target net7.0, which your projects will do by default if you have installed the .NET 7 SDK, then the default language will be C# 11 so it does not need to be explicitly set.

Good Practice: If you are using Visual Studio Code and you have not done so already, install the Visual Studio Code extension named MSBuild project tools. This will give you IntelliSense while editing .csproj files, including making it easy to add the <LangVersion> element with appropriate values.