ADO.NET Cookbook

Appendix A. Converting from C# to VB Syntax

Although all of the examples in this book are shown using C# syntax, it is easy to mentally convert to Visual Basic syntax. This appendix will provide the information you need to convert the documentation for each type into the syntax used by Visual Basic.

Tip

This appendix doesn’t try to completely cover the syntax for each language element it discusses. Instead, it focuses on direct translation of the syntax of the types used in ADO.NET programming from C# to VB.

General Considerations

The most evident difference between C# and Visual Basic (VB) syntax is that C# uses the semicolon (;) as a statement terminator, whereas VB uses a line break. As a result, a statement in C# can occupy multiple lines as long as it is terminated with a semicolon. A VB statement must occupy only a single line. Multiline statements in VB must appear with the VB line continuation character (a space followed by an underscore) on all but the last line.

A second, and not quite so evident, difference is that C# is case sensitive, whereas VB isn’t. (Uniform case use for VB code is enforced by the Visual Studio environment, but it is by no means required.)

Finally, all types and their members have access modifiers that determine the type or member’s accessibility. The keywords for these access modifiers are nearly identical in VB and C#, as Table A-1 shows.

Table A-1. Access modifiers in C# and VB

C# keyword	VB keyword
public	Public
private	Private
protected	Protected ...