C# 5.0 Unleashed

Implicitly Typed Local Variable Declarations

In the previous sections, you’ve seen a syntax used to declare and initialize local variables: specify the type, give the variable a name (lhs), and assign it some expression (rhs).

string name = "Bart";

Expressions, as you will see, always have a type. This means we have specified some redundant information to the compiler. On the left side, we called out a type explicitly, while the compiler could infer that information from the right side. In this case, the literal "Bart" is of type System.String. So, why do we need to specify that type explicitly on the left?

The var Keyword

Until version 2.0 of the C# language, the answer was just this: That’s the way it is; live with it. But starting with version ...