.NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell

Chapter 12. Converting from C# to VB Syntax

Although information on all types and their members is shown using C# syntax, it is easy to mentally convert to Visual Basic syntax. This chapter will provide the information you need to convert the documentation for each type into the syntax used by Visual Basic.

Tip

This chapter does not aim at providing complete coverage of the syntax for each language element it discusses. Instead, it focuses on direct translation of the syntax of the types used in Windows Forms programming from C# to VB.

General Considerations

The most evident difference between C# and VB syntax is that C# uses the semicolon (;) as a statement terminator, whereas VB uses a line break. Hence, while a statement in C# can occupy multiple lines as long as it is terminated with a semicolon, a VB statement must occupy a single line. Multiline statements in VB must appear with the VB line continuation character (a space followed by an underscore) on all but the last line.

A second, and not quite so evident, difference is that C# is case sensitive, whereas VB is not. (Uniform casing for VB code is enforced by the Visual Studio environment, but it is by no means required.)

Finally, all types and their members have access modifiers that determine the type or member’s accessibility. The keywords for these access modifiers are nearly identical in VB and C#, as Table 12-1 shows.

Table 12-1. Access modifiers in C# and VB

C# keyword	VB keyword
public	Public
private ...