Usage guidelines

This section contains guidelines for using common types in publicly accessible APIs. It deals with direct usage of built-in Framework types (e.g., serialization attributes) and overloading common operators.

The System.IDisposable interface is not covered in this section, but is discussed in the Dispose Pattern section.

Note

For guidelines and additional information about other common, built-in .NET Framework types, see the reference topics for the following: System.DateTime, System.DateTimeOffset, System.ICloneable, System.IComparable<T>, System.IEquatable<T>, System.Nullable<T>, System.Object, System.Uri.

In this section

Arrays
Attributes
Collections
Serialization
System.Xml Usage
Equality Operators

Portions © 2005, 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. from Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries, 2nd Edition by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams, published Oct 22, 2008 by Addison-Wesley Professional as part of the Microsoft Windows Development Series.

See also