C# 4.0 Unleashed

Chapter 26. Base Class Library Essentials

In This Chapter

• The BCL: What, Where, and How? 1293

• The Holy System Root Namespace 1301

• Facilities to Work with Text 1346

Now that you’ve been introduced to most of the day-to-day C# language features used, we should say a word or two about the Base Class Library (BCL) provided by .NET. Rarely, other than for academic examples, can a program be written without the use of a significant number of application programming interfaces (APIs) and libraries. And that’s a good thing, really. The relationship between the runtime, various languages that build on it, and all the libraries provided by the .NET Framework should be such that the same language-level skills can be reused to reach out to many ...