Jan Schreuder on .Net

Using VB collections in C#

I talked to Patrick about the problem he had with hashtables and how good he thinks the VB.Net collections are. He wanted to add objects to a list and retrieve them in the order in which they were entered. Hash tables are organized using the hash code of the key. A SortedList could work, but then you need to be aware of how your keys are defined. A Queue might work in this scenario, but why not use the VB.Net Collection object in C#.

I have used Vb.Net objects before in C# applications, and they work fine. I posted about this before, when explaining how to use VB.Net checks like IsNumeric and IsDate in C# applications. So let me show you how you can use VB.Net collections in C#.

1. First, add a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic to your project. You can find the Microsoft.VisualBasic in the list on the .Net tab when you open the Add reference dialog.
2. At the top of your code, where the using directives are, you add the following line of code:
   using Microsoft.VisualBasic;
3. Now you can use the Collections object.

The following example can be used to prove that the VB.Net Collections works:

private void test()
{
    Collection col = new Collection();
    col.Add("first", "key1", null, null);
    col.Add("second", "key2", null, null);
    col.Add("third" , "key3", null, null);
 
    foreach (string test in col)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(test);
    }
}

The code produces the following result:

first
second
third

I tried this in both VS2003 and VS2005. Works like a charm. Who say's VB.Net and C# don't get along?