This section consists of two very long but useful chapters. Chapter 12, The Language Reference, which contains an alphabetic reference of VB language elements, documents the following: Statements, such as AddHandler and Structure...End Structure. Procedures, such as AppActivate and Rename. Many of these were classified as statements in pre-.NET versions of Visual Basic, but now they are methods of one class or another, usually within the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace. The official documentation often describes them as functions, but since they don't return values, they are described here as procedures. Functions, such as Format and IsReference. Compiler directives, such as #Const and #If. Visual Basic classes and their members. Apart from the My Namespace objects, the two intrinsic objects available in Visual Basic are the Collection class and the Err object. Selected classes in the .NET Framework Class Library, along with their members. Documentation of Framework Class Library entries, however, is highly selective; classes and their members appear here either because they replace language elements that were present in VB 6, or because they provide much- needed functionality that supplements existing language elements. Attributes, such as <AttributeUsage> and <VBFixedString>. Of the dozens of attributes available in the .NET Framework, this chapter includes only those of greatest interest to the VB programmer.
Most operators, such as the addition operator (+), are documented separately in Chapter 5. Also, certain language features reference predefined constants and enumeration values. Some of the more useful and interesting constants and enumerations are listed in Appendix C. Chapter 13, The 'My' Reference, includes an alphabetic reference of all major nodes in the My Namespace hierarchy. It specifically documents the following: Objects, which include the major nodes of the hierarchy. Properties, used for setting and retrieving values. Many properties are read- only, and many provide access to consistent system and environment information. Methods, which take a specific useful action. Events, of which there are only a few supported through the My Namespace feature.
When you're looking for a particular language element but don't quite remember what it's called, an alphabetic reference is of little value. Appendix A provides just such a category-based lookup. In a similar way, the My Namespace hierarchy isn't always easy to visualize when its elements are sorted alphabetically. Therefore, Appendix B includes all My Namespace nodes listed hierarchically.
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