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Understanding Top Level Programs

Understanding Top Level Programs

Learn about top-level programs in .NET 6: code generation, implicit imports, and revealing hidden compiler-generated code.

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Top level programs

If we have seen older .NET projects before, we might have expected more code, even just to output a simple message. This is because some code is written for us by the compiler when we target .NET 6 or later.

If we had created the project with .NET SDK 5.0 or earlier or selected the check box with “Do not use top-level statements” label, then the Program.cs file would have more statements, as shown in the following code:

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C#
using System; // Not needed in .NET 6 or later.
namespace HelloCS
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
    }
  }
}

During compilation with .NET SDK 6.0 or later, all the boilerplate code to define a namespace, the Program class, and its Main method is generated and wrapped around the statements we write. This uses a feature introduced in .NET 5 called top-level programs, but it was not until .NET 6 that ...