CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.net.net-4.0
Deivid Carvalho
Deivid Carvalho

Reputation: 311

Is there a way to use C# 6 or higher in .NET 4?

I have a legacy application that uses .NET 4.

I tried to use a C# 6 feature when I was changing the code, but my visual studio generates the following error:

Feature 'interpolated strings' is not available in C# 4. Please use language version 6 or greater.

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I was wondering if there is a way to use the features of the latest versions of C# without updating the version of the framework?

Or is the C# version directly linked with the framework?

obs: updating the framework is not an option.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1903

Answers (3)

Christopher
Christopher

Reputation: 9824

The Language version is a Compiler feature, not a runtime one.

Regardless which source code language language or source code language version you use, the end result will always be the same MSIL code. You can freely pick which Framework version to compile against. Which limits your available .NET Libraries. But it does not affect the C# version you are using in any way.

Of course there might be some Language Features that make little sense without supporting libraries. I can just not think of a concrete example of the top of my head.

Edit: Remembered a concrete example: Named and Optional Parameters. IL always supported that. VB.Net had that already for ages. It was a very important part of COM compatibility, especially using the Office COM inter-op. But Prior to C# 4 we C# programmers could not use it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/classes-and-structs/named-and-optional-arguments

Upvotes: 4

MakePeaceGreatAgain
MakePeaceGreatAgain

Reputation: 37123

The language-version only relies on the version of Visual Studio. To use features intorduced in C#6 you need at least VS2015. This has nothing to do with the installed .NET-framework-version. In fact you can use VS2015 and its compiler-features (e.g. auto-implemented properties with an initial value) and compile against .Net 2.0: 

int MyProperty { get; set; } = -1;

To change the target-framework (e.g. .Net 2.0) use Project properties-->Application-->Target framework.

To change the language version via Project properties-->Build-->Advanced-->Language version.

Let´s consider the following example: Beginning with C#3 you can write the following:

var a = new { MyProperty = 1 };

This compiles for any .Net-version. However the most common use-case for anonymous types is when using Linq to fetch data from a database. Linq was introuced in framework-version 3.5 and heavily depends on lambda-expressions and extension-methods, which both were introduced in C#3:

var result = myCollection.Select(x => new { MyProperty = x.MyProperty });

So although you could use anonymous types in earlier versions of the framework, there was little need to do so.

To get a better view on the difference between the C#- (=language)-version and the framework-version read this post. This thread on the other side lists the language-versions and in which version of VS they were released.

Upvotes: 5

Logesh K. S
Logesh K. S

Reputation: 11

You Need Either Visual Studio 2013 or @ 2015 to use c sharp version 6 u can change the .net version in the project settings. .NET version Wont be a problem

Upvotes: 1

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