I have developed a dll in C#.net. Can we decompile the same in VB.net. If yes, how to do that?
Use a tool like Reflector to convert a compiled C# assembly (IL) into decompiled VB.NET source code (might lose some meaning with certain variable names). Another post mentions some free alternatives to Reflector.
Or convert the C# code using an online resource such as this one (1 code file at a time though).
I agree with Mitch, but as a free alternative to Reflector:
ILSpy
dotPeek
Assuming you have the source, you can use sharpdevelop to convert whole solutions back and forth between c#.net and vb.net
The same group also developed a plugin for visual studio: Code Converter C# to/from VB.NET
Sometimes C# cannot be converted (or decompiled) into VB.Net because there are some elements of C# that have no equivalent in VB. E.g. iterators (yield) and unsafe code. Furthermore some of the free converters fail badly even when there are direct equivalents.
Why do you want to do this anyway? It's probably easy to just use the C# DLL from VB.Net code: you can call it, you can inherit from it. "CLS compliance" will help with this.
For what it's worth, it's also true that there are some elements of VB that have no equivalent in C#, e.g. exception filters.
If you've developed it your self I assume you have access to the source? If so you can just convert it all though here:
http://www.developerfusion.com/tools/convert/csharp-to-vb/
Related
I have a project written in C++ where I'm using swig to generate some C# wrappers as well. The C++ code uses Doxygen style comments to annotate the classes and functions. Is it possible to get Swig to take those doxygen comments and produce doxygen comments for the C# wrapper classes and functions?
Currently, SWIG does not parse code comments including Doxygen documentation at all.
There is a SWIG branch in development since a couple of years to enable SWIG to deal with Doxygen comments, but even that currently (AFAIK) only maps them to Java and Python documentation.
The best option currently is therefore to extract the Doxygen documentation from the C++ source code and insert it into the SWIG generated wrapper. To understand how this can be done, here is a brief explanation of what doxy2swig.py does (and this is indeed meant for python docstrings):
Let Doxygen extract the documentation into its XML format
Parse the XML, and reformat into suitable Python docstrings
Write %feature("docstring") SWIG directives to tell SWIG to attach the docstrings to the wrapped classes and methods.
Basically, something similar can be done for C# as well. I do not know how to do (2) for C#, i.e., how to translate the Doxygen XML output into suitable C# documentation, this you may need to implement yourself (perhaps by modifying the doxy2swig.py script).
For (3) there is a neat trick that is sort of documented here, noting that the same can also be done for C# using the %csclassmodifiers and %csmethodmodifiers. These SWIG feature directives are AFAIK used to prepend either public or protected to C# methods or classes. But they can be hijacked to prepend the extracted documentation (+ the public keyword, not to forget). So they effectively allow the same functionality as the %feature("docstring") directive for Python.
Finally, I don't know C#, but what is the point of having the Doxygen comments included in the C# wrapper? If you only want to use Doxygen to generate documentation, you can do this from the C++ sources directly, so you don't gain anything. In Python, the docstrings can be displayed as help at runtime, and are used by some IDEs. Does C# have this, too?
As of October 2022, the accepted answer from m7thon has become outdated. I have started work in the (public) merge request https://github.com/swig/swig/pull/2421, based on the nice prior work from https://github.com/swig/swig/pull/1695, to add support for doxygen comments for SWIG-generated C#.
The current status in the above MR still has quite significant limitations. Also it has not yet been extensively tested. But it can already achieve basic documentation in C# XML format, and may be a good starting point for people in need of a solution.
I am converting a lot of VB.NET code over to C# and there are a lot of VB functions that C# doesn't have such as DateAdd and DateDiff. Can someone tell me the libraries I would have to reference in order to have access to these functions in my C# code if it is even possible. I already tried adding a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic and it doesn't work.
Time is a factor here which is the only reason I am looking into doing things this way. I want to leave the code in place as much as possible.
Opps it actually is in Microsoft.VisualBasic.
You have to access it like this:
Microsoft.VisualBasic.DateAndTime.DateAdd()
Without working on the source, just on the basis of a binary, is there a way (there sure must be using CodeDom, but it'll be nice if it is possible without CodeDom) to tell if a method's body has an if construct, using reflection?
If it's .Net, grab reflector.
update
After seeing your comment, I think there's a lot of information missing from your question. In particular, what language is the binary written in? Are you asking how to decompile a given .Net binary or are you asking how to use .net to decompile a binary written in some other language not based on the .Net framework?
If the latter, then no, reflection won't allow you to determine what code exists.
If the former, then I'm puzzled. The purpose of reflector is to decompile .net binaries... at which point you could just visually inspect whether an if statement did in fact exist in the method in question.
Decompile (as advised by Chris)
Run the decompiled code through a code parser (See for example CS Parser for C# 2.0 : http://csparser.codeplex.com/
Use parser output to obtain info required, such as presence of token Y within body of method Z.
What is the equivalent C# code for this VB.NET code?
My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles(....)
The My class is VB.NET specific.
You can use the static methods of the System.IO.Directory class - e.g. Directory.GetFiles.
You can use the VB.Net's "My" in C#. It's all code, after all. In your C# project, you'd simply add a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic
You can check out a more detailed explanation here:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/MyNamespace.aspx
I don't think there is anything in 'My' that you can't achieve without using it; but just because you aren't programming in VB.Net you have to not use it.
Having said all that - most architect type people I know would roll their eyes at you if they saw you adding a reference to VisualBasic in a C# project. But it's totally doable.
I've been hearing/reading a lot about the new language enhancements for C# 4. I'm a little curious if these same enhancements are also going to be applied to VB as well, or what. Does anyone know where I can get some insight here? With all the new changes happening to C#, it seems like there will very little reason left to be using VB unless you happen to like the syntax. Are there enhancements that MS isn't making to VB this time that are getting included in C#, or visa versa?
I'd actually overlook the dismissal of VB.Net by Lou Franco. Checkout Panopticon Central:
http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2008/10/31/24803.aspx
http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2008/10/29/24764.aspx
For example:
Then Lucian did a really wonderful
demo of VB 10.0, which is shipping in
Visual Studio 2010. He showed (IIRC)
the following features that should be
familiar to the readers of this blog:
array literals, collection
initializers, automatic properties,
implicit line continuations, statement
lambdas, generic variance, and a
feature that embeds primary interop
assembly types in your assembly so you
don’t have to deploy the PIA. I may
have missed some, so check out the
video when it’s posted!
Some of the changes to C# (e.g Named Optional Parameters) were already in VB. The main strength of VB.NET over C# was Office/COM integration, and the new C# is addressing that.
If you need to target an older .NET version, VB.NET will still be the one to use if you need these features.
Something still missing from C# that vb.net has had a little while: xml literals. But this isn't exactly new.