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namespace
keywordThe namespace
keyword is used to declare a scope that contains a set of related objects. You can use a namespace to organize code elements and to create globally unique types.
namespace SampleNamespace
{
class SampleClass { }
interface ISampleInterface { }
struct SampleStruct { }
enum SampleEnum { a, b }
delegate void SampleDelegate(int i);
namespace Nested
{
class SampleClass2 { }
}
}
File scoped namespace declarations enable you to declare that all types in a file are in a single namespace. The following example is similar to the previous example, but uses a file scoped namespace declaration:
using System;
namespace SampleFileScopedNamespace;
class SampleClass { }
interface ISampleInterface { }
struct SampleStruct { }
enum SampleEnum { a, b }
delegate void SampleDelegate(int i);
When you use file-scoped namespaces, the placement of using
statements affects their scope within the file. File-scoped namespaces lower to the equivalent traditional namespace declaration that ends with a closing bracket at the end of the file. This behavior determines where using
directives are applied as follows:
using
statements are placed before the file-scoped namespace declaration, they're treated as being outside of the namespace and are interpreted as fully qualified namespaces.using
statements are placed after the file-scoped namespace declaration, they're scoped within the namespace itself.For example:
// This using is outside the namespace scope, so it applies globally
using System;
namespace SampleNamespace; // File-scoped namespace declaration
// This using is inside the namespace scope
using System.Text;
public class SampleClass
{
// Class members...
}
In the preceding example, System
is globally accessible, while System.Text
applies only within SampleNamespace
.
The preceding example doesn't include a nested namespace. File scoped namespaces can't include more namespace declarations. You can't declare a nested namespace or a second file-scoped namespace:
namespace SampleNamespace;
class AnotherSampleClass
{
public void AnotherSampleMethod()
{
System.Console.WriteLine(
"SampleMethod inside SampleNamespace");
}
}
namespace AnotherNamespace; // Not allowed!
namespace ANestedNamespace // Not allowed!
{
// declarations...
}
Within a namespace, you can declare zero or more of the following types:
The compiler adds a default namespace. This unnamed namespace, sometimes referred to as the global namespace, is present in every file. It contains declarations not included in a declared namespace. Any identifier in the global namespace is available for use in a named namespace.
Namespaces implicitly have public access. For a discussion of the access modifiers you can assign to elements in a namespace, see Access Modifiers.
It's possible to define a namespace in two or more declarations. For example, the following example defines two classes as part of the MyCompany
namespace:
namespace MyCompany.Proj1
{
class MyClass
{
}
}
namespace MyCompany.Proj1
{
class MyClass1
{
}
}
The following example shows how to call a static method in a nested namespace.
namespace SomeNameSpace
{
public class MyClass
{
static void Main()
{
Nested.NestedNameSpaceClass.SayHello();
}
}
// a nested namespace
namespace Nested
{
public class NestedNameSpaceClass
{
public static void SayHello()
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello");
}
}
}
}
// Output: Hello
For more information, see the Namespaces section of the C# language specification. For more information on file scoped namespace declarations, see the feature specification.
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