Jeff Moden (4/28/2016)
So the following quote was incorrect or correct?Hence [font="Arial Black"]this library exists because Visual Basic includes this functionality[/font], but its usage is not restricted to VB callers.
That quote is correct. As stated in the sentence in my post just prior to the one you quoted above:
According to the MSDN page for Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO Namespace: "The Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO namespace contains types that support the My file system object in Visual Basic".
So again: this functionality exists because it was a feature of the VB language prior to .NET, so they made it available in .NET. But that doesn't mean it is exclusive to a particular language. You can call the Microsoft.VisualBasic methods/functions from F#, Visual C++, etc.
Also and since I don't know for sure on the latest VS, is it possible to install VS without the VB component and, if so, would that function still be available to C# users?
I haven't tried setting up such an environment, but it wouldn't matter if I did since Visual Studio has nothing to do with the functionality provided by the .NET Framework libraries. The DLL is: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll, and comes with the .NET Framwork.
You can even try this for yourself (and it's quite easy). I provided links several posts ago. Go to the link for "Installer" and download and install it. Then run the tests. I assume you don't have Visual Studio installed. Yet the code works, even with a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.
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