Tip Bank

.NET arrays are object types, thus an array variable is actually a pointer to the object where data is actually stored. For this reason, when you pass an array to

Read-only and write-only properties in a Web Service class aren’t visible to the Web Service client. The reason is that XML serialization doesn’t support these sort of properties, and read-only

The System.Math class exposes several static methods that let you perform many common operations. These functions replace the VB6 functions with same name, but there are a few new functions

C# has a nice feature that VB.NET lacks: the ability to define a Main procedure that takes an array of strings, each one containig one of the arguments passed on

Writing an application that returns an ERRORLEVEL to Dos is quite difficult in VB6, because you are forced to use a Windows API that ends the application immediately, thus preventing

The Console class exposes two properties that make it very simple to create command-line utilities that work as filters, exactly like the FIND and MORE utilities that are provided with

The Environment.GetEnvironmentVariables property returns the list of all the environment variables, as an IDictionary object. If you want to display them sorted by their name, as the SET command does

The GetFolderPath method of the Environment class lets you retrieve the path of several important system directories. For example, here’s how you determine the path of the Desktop directory for

In VB.NET you don’t need to call the GetWindowsDirectory and GetSystemDirectory API functions to retrieve the path the Windows and System directories. Retrieving the System directory is as simple as