Arabic or Hebrew Text in Object Names

You can use Arabic or Hebrew text to assign names to folders, variables, or other objects. When working with Arabic, you can use any Arabic characters including Kashida and Diacritics.

Note

Your Windows system and user locales must be set to the appropriate language in order to be able to enter Arabic or Hebrew into the dialog boxes displayed during installation.

Naming Things Using Arabic or Hebrew Text

The following elements can be named using Arabic or Hebrew and will be handled correctly in Visual Studio:

  • Solution, project, and file names, including any folders you include in the project path. Solution Explorer will display solution and element names correctly.

  • File contents. You can open or save files with Unicode encoding or with a selected code page.

    Note

    The code editor is a special case. For details, see below.

  • Data elements. Server Explorer will display these elements correctly and allow you to edit them.

  • Elements copied to the Windows Clipboard.

  • Attributes and metadata.

  • Property values. You can use Arabic or Hebrew text in the Properties window. The window allows you to switch between right-to-left and left-to-right reading order using standard Windows keystrokes (CTRL+RightShift for right-to-left, and CTRL+LeftShift for left-to-right).

  • Code and literal text. In the code editor (which is also the text editor), you can use Arabic or Hebrew to name classes, functions, variables, properties, string literals, attributes, and so on. However, the editor does not support right-to-left reading order; text always starts at the left margin.

    Tip

    It is recommended that you place string literals in resource files instead of hard-coding them into your programs. For more information, see Walkthrough: Localizing Windows Forms.

    Note

    You must be consistent in how you refer to objects named in these languages. For example, if you use Kashida in naming an Arabic variable, you must always use Kashida when referring to that variable, or errors will result.

  • Code comments. You can create comments in Arabic or Hebrew. You can also use these languages in the comment builder tool.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Save and Open Files with Encoding

Concepts

Bi-directional Features at Design Time in Visual Studio

Other Resources

Globalizing and Localizing Applications