Accelerated VB 2008 (eBook)

Trey Nash is an escalation engineer at Microsoft working on the Windows operating systems as well as various other products. When he is not working feverishly within the bowels of the operating system, he is delivering training on .NET Platform debugging as well as user mode and kernel mode debugging on the Windows platform. Prior to working at Microsoft, he was a principal software engineer working on security solutions at Credant Technologies, a market-leading security software company. He also enjoined a stint at a large Bluetooth company developing Bluetooth solutions for the release of Microsoft Vista. Before that, he called Macromedia, Inc. home for five years. At Macromedia, he worked on a cross-product engineering team for several years, designing solutions for a wide range of products throughout the company, including Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. He specialized in COM/DCOM using C/C++/ATL until the .NET revolution. He's been glued to computers ever since he scored his first, a TI-99/4A, when he was a mere 13 years old. He astounded his parents by turning a childhood obsession into a decent-paying career, much to their dismay. Trey received his bachelor of science and his master of engineering degrees in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University. When he's not sitting in front of a computer, you can find him working in his garage, playing his piano, brushing up on a foreign language (Russian and Icelandic are the current favorites), or playing ice hockey.

Contents at a Glance 5
Contents 6
About the Authors 10
About the Technical Reviewers 11
Acknowledgments 12
Introduction 13
About This Book 13
VB 2008 Overview 16
Differences Between VB 2008, C# 3.0, and VB6 16
CLR Garbage Collection 18
Common Type System 18
A Simple VB 2008 Program 20
What’s New in VB 2008 20
Summary 25
VB 2008 Syntax 26
Types and Variables 26
Namespaces 40
Statements 44
Control Flow Constructs 44
Iteration and Looping Constructs 46
Summary 48
Classes and Structures 49
Class Definitions 49
Value Type Definitions 62
Boxing and Unboxing 66
System. Object 71
Creating Objects 72
Destroying Objects 76
Disposable Objects 77
Summary 81
Methods, Properties, and Fields 82
Methods 82
Properties 90
Fields 93
Summary 97
VB 2008 and the CLR 98
From VB to IL 98
From IL to Platform 100
Understanding Assemblies 101
Metadata 108
Summary 109
Interfaces 110
Interfaces Are Reference Types 110
Defining Interfaces 111
Implementing Interfaces in Structures 116
Using Generics with Interfaces 118
Contracts 120
Choosing Between Interfaces and Classes 123
Polymorphism with Interfaces 127
Summary 128
Operator Overloading 129
Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should 129
Operators That Can Be Overloaded 129
Types and Formats of Overloaded Operators 130
Operators Shouldn’t Mutate Their Operands 131
Does Parameter Order Matter? 132
Overloading the Addition Operator 133
Comparison Operators 134
Conversion Operators 141
Summary 144
Exception Handling 145
Handling Exceptions 145
Avoid Using Exceptions to Control Flow 146
Mechanics of Handling Exceptions in VB 2008 146
Achieving Exception Neutrality 155
Creating Custom Exception Classes 167
Working with Allocated Resources and Exceptions 170
Providing Rollback Behavior 174
Summary 177
Working with Strings 178
String Overview 178
String Literals 179
Format Specifiers and Globalization 180
Working with Strings from Outside Sources 192
StringBuilder 195
Searching Strings with Regular Expressions 196
Summary 207
Arrays and Collections 208
Introduction to Arrays 208
Multidimensional Arrays 211
Multidimensional Jagged Arrays 213
Collection Types 214
How Iteration Works 222
Summary 226
Delegates and Events 227
Overview of Delegates 227
Delegate Creation and Use 228
Events 239
Summary 245
Generics 246
Introduction to Generics 246
Generic Type Definitions and Constructed Types 249
Constraints 260
Generic System Collections 264
Select Problems and Solutions 266
Summary 279
Threading 280
Threading in VB 2008 and . NET 3.5 280
Synchronizing Threads 294
Using the Thread Pool 318
Summary 325
VB 2008 Best Practices 326
Reference- Type Best Practices 326
Value- Type Best Practices 371
Summary 381
LINQ with VB 2008 382
LINQ Overview 382
LINQ to Objects 388
LINQ to XML 398
LINQ to SQL 414
Summary 425
Resources 426
Books 426
Articles 427
Web 427
Running the Examples 429
Example Types 429
A Few Words Regarding Modules 430
Index 431