C# in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Name

Object

Synopsis

This class is the root of all .NET types, including value types and reference types. Some CLR languages such as C# and VB.NET do not require a type to inherit from Object explicitly. If no base type is listed in a class declaration, it is assumed that the type is to inherit from Object. Therefore, all types derive from it implicitly and can use any of its methods.

Use the GetType( ) method to obtain a description of your object’s internal metadata as a Type object. Use the ToString( ) method to get a String that represents your object. By default, this is the fully qualified type name of your object, but most classes override this method to provide something more useful, such as a string representation of the object’s content. For example, System.Drawing.Point.ToString( ) might return (10, 5).

The MemberwiseClone( ) method returns a new object of the same type that is a member-by-member duplicate. This object is called a shallow copy because any subobjects are not copied. Instead, the references are duplicated, meaning that both the original and cloned type refer to the same subobjects. MemberwiseClone( ) is protected, so it can be called only from methods of your derived object. Usually, you will implement the ICloneable interface for your objects and call MemberwiseClone( ) from a customized ICloneable.Clone( ) method.

Use the Equals( ) method to test for reference equality. Derived value-type classes override this method to provide value equality (which returns ...