Question

What does the global:: stand for in C#? for example what is the difference between

private global::System.Int32 myInt;

and

private int myInt;

Thanks

Answer 1

It’s the “global” namespace – it forces the compiler to look for a name without taking other using directives into consideration. For example, suppose you had:

public class Bar{}

namespace Foo
{
    public class Bar {}

    public class Test
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            Bar bar1 = null; // Refers to Foo.Bar
            global::Bar bar2 = null; // Refers to the "top level" Bar
        }
    }
}

Basically it’s a way of avoiding naming collisions – you’re most likely to see it in tool-generated code, where the tool doesn’t necessarily know all the other types in the system. It’s rarer to need it in manually-written code.

See “How to: Use the global namespace alias” on MSDN for more details, along with the :: namespace qualifier.