22.1 General Considerations

The most evident difference between C# and VB syntax is that C# uses the semicolon (;) as a statement terminator, whereas VB uses a line break. Hence, while a statement in C# can occupy multiple lines as long as it is terminated with a semicolon, a VB statement must occupy a single line. Multiline statements in VB must appear with the VB line continuation character (a space followed by an underscore) on all but the last line.

A second, and not quite so evident, difference is that C# is case-sensitive, whereas VB is not. (Uniform casing for VB code is enforced by the Visual Studio environment, but it is by no means required.)

Finally, all types and their members have access modifiers that determine the type or member's accessibility. The keywords for these access modifiers are nearly identical in VB and C#, as Table 22-1 shows.

Table 22-1. Access modifiers in C# and VB

C# keyword	VB keyword
public	Public
private	Private
protected	Protected
internal	Friend
protected internal	Protected Friend