Summary
The BCL defines hundreds of useful interfaces and classes to boost a developer's productivity. In this chapter, we covered many important ones. Table 5.5 summarizes some of these interfaces and classes. As an exercise, I suggest that you cover the right-hand column and try to remember the idea behind each interface or class.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| IEnumerable | Represents enumerable object. Makes foreach keyword in C# work. |
| IEnumerator | Represents enumerator object. Returned by the enumerable object via GetEnumerator method. |
| ICollection | Represents a collection. Inherits IEnumerable. |
| IList | Represents a manageable collection. Inherits ICollection and IEnumerable. |
| ICloneable | Provides the semantics of deep copy on an object. |
| ArrayList | A class that stores weakly typed objects. Implements IList, ICollection, IEnumerable, and ICloneable. |
| BitArray, Queue, SortedList, Stack, StringCollection | Various collection types. |
| CollectionBase | A helper class that can be inherited to create a strongly typed collection. |
| Array | A class that represents an array of strongly typed items. Once allocated, the size cannot be changed. |
| IDictionary | Represents a collection of key–value pairs. |
| Hashtable | Dictionary holding key–value pairs. |
| IHashCodeProvider | Provides a way to define your own hash code function. |
| IComparer, IComparable | Provides a way to compare two objects. |
| SortedList | Sorted dictionary. |
| ListDictionary | An efficient implementation of a dictionary useful for less than 10 items. |
| DictionaryBase | A helper class that can be inherited to create a strongly typed dictionary. |
| Stream | An abstract base class for reading and writing data. |
| FileStream | Read or write data from or to a file. |
| Encoding | Exposes various encoding classes as static properties. |
| StreamReader, StreamWriter | Read or write data as characters and lines. |
| BinaryReader, BinaryWriter | Read or write basic datatypes in binary format. |
| Serializable | An attribute that indicates that the object can be serialized. |
| ISerializable | Helps in customizing serialization on an object. |
| IFormatter | Represents a formatter. |
| BinaryFormatter | Serializes an object in binary format. |
| SoapFormatter | Serializes an object in SOAP format. |
| XmlSerializer | Serializes an object in XML format. |
| IFormattable | Provides custom formatting to strings. |
| String | Stores a string. |
| StringBuilder | Mutable string class. |
At this point, you should be fairly comfortable in developing programs using the BCL classes. We will be using many of these classes in the rest of the book.
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