Preview of a C# 3.0 Book by Bruce Eckel and Jamie King

I mention the preview of their book that Jamie King and Bruce Eckel have made available as a free download on the MindView website in my latest Community Convergence post. However, I did not describe its contents, and so I thought I would take a moment to make sure that the community is aware of this very valuable resource.

The post is entitled C# Query Expressions And Supporting Features in C# 3.0, and it runs to 233 pages of text bound in a PDF file. Perhaps the simplest way to give you an idea of the scope of this document will be to show you the table of contents for the text you will download:

• Preface 1
  • What makes this book stand out?..................... 1
  • Reading vs. Wrestling ...........2
  • The build system...................2
  • Reviews .................................4
  • Errors ....................................4
  • Source Code...........................4
  • Using this book
  • to teach a class.......................4
  • Dedications ...........................5
  • Jamie: .............................................5
• Simple New Features 7
  • Extension methods................ 7
    • Inheritance vs. extension methods ........................11
    • Utilities for this book.................... 15
    • Extended delegates....................... 19
    • Other rules....................................20
  • Implicitly-typed local variables......................23
  • Automatic properties ..........25
  • Implicitly-typed arrays........28
  • Object initializers ................33
  • Collection initializers ..........35
  • Anonymous types................37
  • Lambda expressions............45
    • Func ..............................................50
• Query Expressions 52
  • Basic LINQ..........................52
  • Translation..........................54
    • Degeneracy ...................................59
    • Chained where clauses ...............60
  • Introduction to Deferred Execution ............. 61
  • Multiple froms ...................63
  • Transparent identifiers ....... 71
    • Iteration Variable Scope...............73
  • More complex data..............78
  • let clauses ...........................83
  • Ordering data ......................86
  • Grouping data .....................89
  • Joining data.........................95
  • Nested Queries .................. 102
    • into.............................................. 105
    • let clause translations.................108
    • let vs. into....................................113
    • joining into ..................................115
    • Outer joins...................................121
  • Other query operators....... 126
• Exercise Solutions 139
  Chapter 1 ........................... 139
  Chapter 2............................161

Clearly there is a great deal of useful information here. I think many developers will find this to be a great resource.

Elsewhere I mention the other great books that are coming out on LINQ. I'm calling this one out in more detail simply because it is a free resource that everyone can access immediately.