Signatures and overloading

Methods, instance constructors, indexers, and operators are characterized by their signatures:

· The signature of a method consists of the name of the method, the number of type parameters and the type and kind (value, reference, or output) of each of its formal parameters, considered in the order left to right. For these purposes, any type parameter of the method that occurs in the type of a formal parameter is identified not by its name, but by its ordinal position in the type argument list of the method. The signature of a method specifically does not include the return type, the params modifier that may be specified for the right-most parameter, nor the optional type parameter constraints.

· The signature of an instance constructor consists of the type and kind (value, reference, or output) of each of its formal parameters, considered in the order left to right. The signature of an instance constructor specifically does not include the params modifier that may be specified for the right-most parameter.

· The signature of an indexer consists of the type of each of its formal parameters, considered in the order left to right. The signature of an indexer specifically does not include the element type, nor does it include the paramsmodifier that may be specified for the right-most parameter.

· The signature of an operator consists of the name of the operator and the type of each of its formal parameters, considered in the order left to right. The signature of an operator specifically does not include the result type.

Signatures are the enabling mechanism for overloading of members in classes, structs, and interfaces:

· Overloading of methods permits a class, struct, or interface to declare multiple methods with the same name, provided their signatures are unique within that class, struct, or interface.

· Overloading of instance constructors permits a class or struct to declare multiple instance constructors, provided their signatures are unique within that class or struct.

· Overloading of indexers permits a class, struct, or interface to declare multiple indexers, provided their signatures are unique within that class, struct, or interface.

· Overloading of operators permits a class or struct to declare multiple operators with the same name, provided their signatures are unique within that class or struct.

Although out and ref parameter modifiers are considered part of a signature, members declared in a single type cannot differ in signature solely by ref and out. A compile-time error occurs if two members are declared in the same type with signatures that would be the same if all parameters in both methods with out modifiers were changed to ref modifiers. For other purposes of signature matching (e.g., hiding or overriding), ref and out are considered part of the signature and do not match each other. (This restriction is to allow C# programs to be easily translated to run on the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), which does not provide a way to define methods that differ solely in ref and out.)

For the purposes of singatures, the types object and dynamic are considered the same. Members declared in a single type can therefore not differ in signature solely by object and dynamic.

The following example shows a set of overloaded method declarations along with their signatures.

interface ITest
{
void F(); // F()

void F(int x); // F(int)

void F(ref int x); // F(ref int)

void F(out int x); // F(out int) error

void F(int x, int y); // F(int, int)

int F(string s); // F(string)

int F(int x); // F(int) error

void F(string[] a); // F(string[])

void F(params string[] a); // F(string[]) error
}

Note that any ref and out parameter modifiers (§10.6.1) are part of a signature. Thus, F(int) and F(ref int) are unique signatures. However, F(ref int) and F(out int) cannot be declared within the same interface because their signatures differ solely by ref and out. Also, note that the return type and the params modifier are not part of a signature, so it is not possible to overload solely based on return type or on the inclusion or exclusion of the params modifier. As such, the declarations of the methods F(int) and F(params string[]) identified above result in a compile-time error.

Scopes

The scope of a name is the region of program text within which it is possible to refer to the entity declared by the name without qualification of the name. Scopes can be nested, and an inner scope may redeclare the meaning of a name from an outer scope (this does not, however, remove the restriction imposed by §3.3 that within a nested block it is not possible to declare a local variable with the same name as a local variable in an enclosing block). The name from the outer scope is then said to be hidden in the region of program text covered by the inner scope, and access to the outer name is only possible by qualifying the name.

· The scope of a namespace member declared by a namespace-member-declaration (§9.5) with no enclosing namespace-declaration is the entire program text.

· The scope of a namespace member declared by a namespace-member-declaration within a namespace-declaration whose fully qualified name is N is the namespace-body of every namespace-declaration whose fully qualified name is N or starts with N, followed by a period.

· The scope of name defined by an extern-alias-directive extends over the using-directives, global-attributes and namespace-member-declarations of its immediately containing compilation unit or namespace body. An extern-alias-directive does not contribute any new members to the underlying declaration space. In other words, an extern-alias-directive is not transitive, but, rather, affects only the compilation unit or namespace body in which it occurs.

· The scope of a name defined or imported by a using-directive (§9.4) extends over the namespace-member-declarations of the compilation-unit or namespace-body in which the using-directive occurs. A using-directive may make zero or more namespace or type names available within a particular compilation-unit or namespace-body, but does not contribute any new members to the underlying declaration space. In other words, a using-directive is not transitive but rather affects only the compilation-unit or namespace-body in which it occurs.

· The scope of a type parameter declared by a type-parameter-list on a class-declaration (§10.1) is the class-base, type-parameter-constraints-clauses, and class-body of that class-declaration.

· The scope of a type parameter declared by a type-parameter-list on a struct-declaration (§11.1) is the struct-interfaces, type-parameter-constraints-clauses, and struct-body of that struct-declaration.

· The scope of a type parameter declared by a type-parameter-list on an interface-declaration (§13.1) is the interface-base, type-parameter-constraints-clauses, and interface-body of that interface-declaration.

· The scope of a type parameter declared by a type-parameter-list on a delegate-declaration (§15.1) is the return-type, formal-parameter-list, and type-parameter-constraints-clauses of that delegate-declaration.

· The scope of a member declared by a class-member-declaration (§10.1.6) is the class-body in which the declaration occurs. In addition, the scope of a class member extends to the class-body of those derived classes that are included in the accessibility domain (§3.5.2) of the member.

· The scope of a member declared by a struct-member-declaration (§11.2) is the struct-body in which the declaration occurs.

· The scope of a member declared by an enum-member-declaration (§14.3) is the enum-body in which the declaration occurs.

· The scope of a parameter declared in a method-declaration (§10.6) is the method-body of that method-declaration.

· The scope of a parameter declared in an indexer-declaration (§10.9) is the accessor-declarations of that indexer-declaration.

· The scope of a parameter declared in an operator-declaration (§10.10) is the block of that operator-declaration.

· The scope of a parameter declared in a constructor-declaration (§10.11) is the constructor-initializer and block of that constructor-declaration.

· The scope of a parameter declared in a lambda-expression (§7.15) is the lambda-expression-body of that lambda-expression

· The scope of a parameter declared in an anonymous-method-expression (§7.15) is the block of that anonymous-method-expression.

· The scope of a label declared in a labeled-statement (§8.4) is the block in which the declaration occurs.

· The scope of a local variable declared in a local-variable-declaration (§8.5.1) is the block in which the declaration occurs.

· The scope of a local variable declared in a switch-block of a switch statement (§8.7.2) is the switch-block.

· The scope of a local variable declared in a for-initializer of a for statement (§8.8.3) is the for-initializer, the for-condition, the for-iterator, and the contained statement of the for statement.

· The scope of a local constant declared in a local-constant-declaration (§8.5.2) is the block in which the declaration occurs. It is a compile-time error to refer to a local constant in a textual position that precedes its constant-declarator.

· The scope of a variable declared as part of a foreach-statement, using-statement, lock-statement or query-expression is determined by the expansion of the given construct.

Within the scope of a namespace, class, struct, or enumeration member it is possible to refer to the member in a textual position that precedes the declaration of the member. For example

class A
{
void F() {
i = 1;
}

int i = 0;
}

Here, it is valid for F to refer to i before it is declared.

Within the scope of a local variable, it is a compile-time error to refer to the local variable in a textual position that precedes the local-variable-declarator of the local variable. For example

class A
{
int i = 0;

void F() {
i = 1; // Error, use precedes declaration
int i;
i = 2;
}

void G() {
int j = (j = 1); // Valid
}

void H() {
int a = 1, b = ++a; // Valid
}
}

In the F method above, the first assignment to i specifically does not refer to the field declared in the outer scope. Rather, it refers to the local variable and it results in a compile-time error because it textually precedes the declaration of the variable. In the G method, the use of j in the initializer for the declaration of j is valid because the use does not precede the local-variable-declarator. In the H method, a subsequent local-variable-declarator correctly refers to a local variable declared in an earlier local-variable-declarator within the same local-variable-declaration.

The scoping rules for local variables are designed to guarantee that the meaning of a name used in an expression context is always the same within a block. If the scope of a local variable were to extend only from its declaration to the end of the block, then in the example above, the first assignment would assign to the instance variable and the second assignment would assign to the local variable, possibly leading to compile-time errors if the statements of the block were later to be rearranged.

The meaning of a name within a block may differ based on the context in which the name is used. In the example

using System;

class A {}

class Test
{
static void Main() {
string A = "hello, world";
string s = A; // expression context

Type t = typeof(A); // type context

Console.WriteLine(s); // writes "hello, world"
Console.WriteLine(t); // writes "A"
}
}

the name A is used in an expression context to refer to the local variable A and in a type context to refer to the class A.