C# 0 The Complete Reference

MyMeth( )

 is encountered in 

Main( )

 when this program is compiled, 

a warning will be generated that tells the user to use 

MyMeth2( )

 instead.

A second form of 

Obsolete

 is shown here:

[Obsolete(“

message

”,

error

)]

Here, 

error

 is a Boolean value. If it is true, then use of the obsolete item generates a 

compilation error rather than a warning. The difference is, of course, that a program 

containing an error cannot be compiled into an executable program.

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18

Generics

T

his chapter examines one of C#’s most sophisticated and powerful features: 

generics.

Interestingly, although generics are now an indispensable part of C# programming, 

they were not included in the original 1.0 release. Instead, they were added by C# 2.0. 

It is not an overstatement to say that the addition of generics fundamentally changed the 

character of C#. Not only did it add a new syntactic element, it also added new capabilities 

and resulted in many changes and upgrades to the library. Although it has been a few years 

since the inclusion of generics in C#, the effects still reverberate throughout the language.

The generics feature is so important because it enables the creation of classes, structures, 

interfaces, methods, and delegates that work in a type-safe manner with various kinds of 

data. As you may know, many algorithms are logically the same no matter what type of 

data they are being applied to. For example, the mechanism that supports a queue is the 

same whether the queue is storing items of type