Beginning Object-Oriented Programming with C#

Chapter 4

Understanding C# Statements

What you will learn in this chapter:

• Operators and operands
• Expressions
• Statements
• lvalues and rvalues
• What a symbol table is and how Visual Studio uses it
• How Visual Studio interacts with Windows
• The Bucket Analogy
• Using the Visual Studio debugger
• Magic numbers and why to avoid them

wrox.com code downloads for this chapter

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter at www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=9781118336922 on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter04 folder and is individually named according to the names throughout this chapter.

Most beginning books do not discuss many of the topics presented in this chapter. This may cause you to wonder why you need to understand them. There are several reasons. First, after you master these topics, many of the other elements of C# (and other programming languages in general) become clearer and more intuitive. Memorizing certain rules is one approach to learning a language: After you memorized (and obey) a rule, you can avoid some of the error messages that Visual Studio might throw at you. However, truly understanding why a rule exists in the first place is a vastly superior way to learn. It is this higher level of understanding that you should seek. If you understand the material presented in this chapter, finding and correcting program errors becomes easier. Error detection becomes easier because you have a deeper understanding of what C# does “under the hood.” Finally, ...