About the Book

C# in Depth, Third Edition has been thoroughly revised to cover the new features of C# 5, including the subtleties of writing maintainable asynchronous code. You'll see the power of C# in action, learning how to work with high-value features that you'll be glad to have in your toolkit. And you'll learn to avoid hidden pitfalls of C# programming with the help of crystal clear explanations of "behind the scenes" issues. This book assumes you've digested your first C# book and are hungry for more!

About the Author

Jon Skeet is a Senior Software Engineer at Google, and a highly visible participant of newsgroups, user groups, international conferences, and the Stack Overflow Q&A site. Jon spends much of his day coding in Java, but his heart belongs to C#.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Preparing for the journey Chapter 1 The changing face of C# development · Starting with a simple data type · Sorting and filtering · Handling an absence of data · Introducing LINQ · COM and dynamic typing · Writing asynchronous code without the heartache · Dissecting the .NET platform · Making your code super awesome Chapter 2 Core foundations: building on C# 1 · Delegates · Type system characteristics · Value types and reference types · Beyond C# 1: new features on a solid base Part 2 C# 2: Solving the issues of C# 1 Chapter 3 Parameterized typing with generics · Why generics are necessary · Simple generics for everyday use · Beyond the basics · Advanced generics · Limitations of generics in C# and other languages Chapter 4 Saying nothing with nullable types · What do you do when you just don’t have a value? · System.Nullable and System.Nullable · C# 2’s syntactic sugar for nullable types · Novel uses of nullable types Chapter 5 Fast-tracked delegates · Saying goodbye to awkward delegate syntax · Method group conversions · Covariance and contravariance · Inline delegate actions with anonymous methods · Capturing variables in anonymous methods Chapter 6 Implementing iterators the easy way · C# 1: The pain of handwritten iterators · C# 2: Simple iterators with yield statements · Real-life iterator examples · Pseudo-synchronous code with the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime Chapter 7 Concluding C# 2: the final features · Partial types · Static classes · Separate getter/setter property access · Namespace aliases · Pragma directives · Fixed-size buffers in unsafe code · Exposing internal members to selected assemblies Part 3 C# 3: Revolutionizing data access Chapter 8 Cutting fluff with a smart compiler · Automatically implemented properties · Implicit typing of local variables · Simplified initialization · Implicitly typed arrays · Anonymous types Chapter 9 Lambda expressions and expression trees · Lambda expressions as delegates · Simple examples using List and events · Expression trees · Changes to type inference and overload resolution Chapter 10 Extension methods · Life before extension methods · Extension method syntax · Extension methods in .NET 3.5 · Usage ideas and guidelines Chapter 11 Query expressions and LINQ to Objects · Introducing LINQ · Simple beginnings: selecting elements · Filtering and ordering a sequence · Let clauses and transparent identifiers · Joins · Groupings and continuations · Choosing between query expressions and dot notation Chapter 12 LINQ beyond collections · Querying a database with LINQ to SQL · Translations using IQueryable and IQueryProvider · LINQ-friendly APIs and LINQ to XML · Replacing LINQ to Objects with Parallel LINQ · Inverting the query model with LINQ to Rx · Extending LINQ to Objects Part 4 C# 4: Playing nicely with others Chapter 13 Minor changes to simplify code · Optional parameters and named arguments · Improvements for COM interoperability · Generic variance for interfaces and delegates · Teeny tiny changes to locking and field-like events Chapter 14 Dynamic binding in a static language · What? When? Why? How? · The five-minute guide to dynamic · Examples of dynamic typing · Looking behind the scenes · Implementing dynamic behavior Part 5 C# 5: Asynchrony made simple Chapter 15 Asynchrony with async/await · Introducing asynchronous functions · Thinking about asynchrony · Syntax and semantics · Asynchronous anonymous functions · Implementation details: compiler transformation · Using async/await effectively Chapter 16 C# 5 bonus features and closing thoughts · Changes to captured variables in for each loops · Caller information attributes · Closing thoughts Appendix A LINQ standard query operators Appendix B Generic collections in .NET Appendix C Version summaries Index