C# Primer Plus

Lexical Structure

When the C# compiler receives a piece of source code to compile, it is faced with the seemingly daunting task of deciphering a long list of characters (more specifically Unicode characters, presented in Appendix E, “Unicode Character Set”) which can be found at www.samspublishing.com and turn them into matching MSIL with exactly the same meaning as the original source code. To make sense of this mass of source code, it must recognize the atomic elements of C#—the unbreakable pieces making up the C# source code. Examples of atomic elements are a brace ({), a parenthesis ((), and keywords like class and if. The task performed by the compiler, associated with differentiating opening and closing braces, keywords, parentheses, and ...