Namespaces - C# Programming Guide | Microsoft Docs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/namespaces/
Namespaces are heavily used in C# programming in two ways. First, the .NET Framework uses namespaces to organize its many classes, as follows:
System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
System
is a namespace and Console
is a class in that namespace. The using
keyword can be used so that the complete name is not required, as in the following example:
using System;
Console.WriteLine("Hello");
Console.WriteLine("World!");
For more information, see the using Directive.
Second, declaring your own namespaces can help you control the scope of class and method names in larger programming projects. Use the namespace keyword to declare a namespace, as in the following example:
namespace SampleNamespace
{
class SampleClass
{
public void SampleMethod()
{
System.Console.WriteLine(
"SampleMethod inside SampleNamespace");
}
}
}
The name of the namespace must be a valid C# identifier name.
Namespaces Overview
Namespaces have the following properties:
- They organize large code projects.
- They are delimited by using the
.
operator. - The
using
directive obviates the requirement to specify the name of the namespace for every class. - The
global
namespace is the "root" namespace:global::System
will always refer to the .NET System namespace.
using directive - C# Reference | Microsoft Docs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/keywords/using-directive
The using
directive has three uses:
-
To allow the use of types in a namespace so that you do not have to qualify the use of a type in that namespace:
C#using System.Text;
-
To allow you to access static members and nested types of a type without having to qualify the access with the type name.
C#using static System.Math;
For more information, see the using static directive.
-
To create an alias for a namespace or a type. This is called a using alias directive.
C#using Project = PC.MyCompany.Project;
The using
keyword is also used to create using statements, which help ensure that IDisposable objects such as files and fonts are handled correctly. See using Statement for more information.
Using static type
You can access static members of a type without having to qualify the access with the type name:
using static System.Console;
using static System.Math;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
WriteLine(Sqrt(3*3 + 4*4));
}
}
Remarks
The scope of a using
directive is limited to the file in which it appears.
The using
directive can appear:
- At the beginning of a source code file, before any namespace or type definitions.
- In any namespace, but before any namespace or types declared in this namespace.
Otherwise, compiler error CS1529 is generated.
Create a using
alias directive to make it easier to qualify an identifier to a namespace or type. In any using
directive, the fully-qualified namespace or type must be used regardless of the using
directives that come before it. No using
alias can be used in the declaration of a using
directive. For example, the following generates a compiler error:
using s = System.Text;
using s.RegularExpressions;
Create a using
directive to use the types in a namespace without having to specify the namespace. A using
directive does not give you access to any namespaces that are nested in the namespace you specify.
Namespaces come in two categories: user-defined and system-defined. User-defined namespaces are namespaces defined in your code. For a list of the system-defined namespaces, see .NET API Browser.
For examples on referencing methods in other assemblies, see Create and Use Assemblies Using the Command Line.