Section 3.1. Statements

3.1. Statements

In C#, a complete program instruction is called a statement and each statement ends with a semicolon (;) . Programs consist of sequences of statements such as:

 int myVariable;                   // a statement     myVariable = 23;                  // another statement     int anotherVariable = myVariable; // yet another statement 

The compiler starts at the beginning of a source code file and reads down, executing statement after statement in the order encountered . This would be entirely straightforward, and terribly limiting, were it not for branching . Branching allows you to change the order in which statements are evaluated. See Chapter 5 for more information about branching.