C# Programming

Cover | Introduction | Basics | Classes | The .NET Framework | Advanced Topics | Index

C sharp musical note

Variables are used to store values. More technically, a variable binds an object (in the general

sense of the term, i.e. a specific value) to an identifier (the variable's name) so that the object

can be accessed later. Variables can, for example, store a value for later use:

string name = "Dr. Jones";

Console.WriteLine("Good morning " + name);

In this example "name" is the identifier and "Dr. Jones" is the value that we bound to it. Also,

each variable is declared with an explicit type. Only values whose types are compatible with the

variable's declared type can be bound to (stored in) the variable. In the above example we stored

"Dr. Jones" into a variable of the type string. This is a legal statement. However, if we had said

int name = "Dr. Jones", the compilerwould have thrown an error telling us that you cannot implicitly

convert between int and string. There are methods for doing this, but we will talk about them

later.

Fields, Local Variables, and Parameters

C# supports several program elements corresponding to the general programming co