Cross langauge inheritance

ndramkumar · September 25th, 2006, 10:46 PM

Dear Friends,

I have written C# class library with overloaded methods namely,
1.Add() &
2.add().

Since C# is case sensitive it will accept this. But If I inherit this in VB.NET the method Add() only is accessible. Plz explain me the reason behind this.

Ram Kumar.N.D.

BrianWren · September 29th, 2006, 05:00 PM

All flavors of C are case-sensitive. (And Java as well.)
VB has always "corrected" mistyped atom names to whatever was the first use of that name.
If you type

Code:

    Dim rEgion As String

    REGion = "Pacific Northwest"

VB will change your typing to cause the result to be

Code:

    Dim rEgion As String

Code:

    rEgion = "Pacific Northwest"

Try the CallByName method, and see if that maintains your case distinction.

By the way, having two routines with the same name but in a different case is very bad form. It not only leads to problems like you are writing about, but makes it so that typing incorrectly (or even just having your mind wander for a few keystrokes) will never be caught by the compiler as an error.

Imar · September 30th, 2006, 08:13 AM

One of the Microsoft API design guidelines is that you should never expose public methods that differ only in casing of the name. While this works in C# because it's a case sensitive language, it's not CLR compliant because there are other languages that are case insensitive.

Why have you chosen for a different name in casing only? Is it possible to accomplish the same thing with, for example, an overload?

Imar
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