Assignment to apparently nonexistent variables in VB.NET

Question

I have some VB.NET (which I don't normally deal with) code which must be converted to C# (which I normally do).

The code happens to be in a Windows Forms app. I notice a couple of places such as:

Public Sub New()
    ParentWindow = Me

where there is no ParentWindow variable defined, and it doesn't seem to be inherited here:

Public Class MainWindow
    Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form

    Private Shared parentWindow As MainWindow
    '....

(Though note that there is a similar variable with a lower-case first letter.)

and this:

DocumentCount = 0;

where, again, there is no corresponding variable definition and a straight conversion to C# Windows Forms indicates that there is no such member in the parent class.

Am I missing an import somewhere, or is this a feature peculiar to VB.NET that doesn't translate directly to C#?

Answer 1

If this is working it's likely that you have Option Explicit set to off. This is a feature of VB.Net that allows for variables to be used before they are declared. Try adding the following to the top of the file

Option Explicit On

Answer 2

VB is case insensitive. So parentWindow and ParentWindow may very well refer to the same variable. Usually the IDE fixes the case for you though...

Answer 3

VB is case insensitive, so it's actually assigning to parentWindow and documentCount.

(Edited in response to other comment)