Write to the Console
Your first C# program
Our first excercise is to get comfortable with the structure of a simple C# application that writes to the console.
Let’s try to run a C# program that prints Hello World
to the console. The line of code Console.WriteLine ("Hello World");
does this for us. It tells the computer to write whatever is inbetween the () to the screen.
Let’s write some code!
In the above .NET Fiddle frame, add a new line of code below the first line to print “Hello your name”. It should look something like this.
![The starting screen of a fiddle](../images/Step1.png)
You should see your output on the bottom of the screen. Cool huh?
Let’s try printing other things. Add some additional lines of code to:
- Print numbers by putting numbers in the parenthesis (i.e.
Console.WriteLine(42);
). No double quotes needed. - Put some text together (i.e.
Console.WriteLine("Hi " + "Sally");
)
Did you notice that all the statements you typed printed on different lines?
Sometimes we want to write on the same like. We use a slightly different code Console.Write
instead of Console.WriteLine
.
Add two lines of code:
Console.Write("I like to eat ");
Console.Write("apples.");
And give it a try.
!! Important !! Sometimes you can’t just put characters in between " "
When putting characters in between " "
in a print statement, sometimes it’s easy to confuse the computer on what characters to print.
For example, how do we tell computer to print "
?
If you type Console.WriteLine(""");
, you will get an error because the computer can’t identify where the text ends!
Instead, certain characters need to be escaped by adding a \
in front of it.
Console.Writeline("\"");` // this prints out "