What are the uses of “using” in C#?

Question

User kokos answered the wonderful Hidden Features of C# question by mentioning the using keyword. Can you elaborate on that? What are the uses of

Answer 1

Microsoft documentation states that using has a double function (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zhdeatwt.aspx), both as a directive and in statements. As a statement, as it was pointed out here in other answers, the keyword is basically syntactic sugar to determine a scope to dispose an IDisposable object. As a directive, it is routinely used to import namespaces and types. Also as a directive, you can create aliases for namespaces and types, as pointed out in the book "C# 5.0 In a Nutshell: The Definitive Guide" (http://www.amazon.com/5-0-Nutshell-The-Definitive-Reference-ebook/dp/B008E6I1K8), by Joseph and Ben Albahari. One example:

namespace HelloWorld
{
    using AppFunc = Func, List>;
    public class Startup
    {
        public static AppFunc OrderEvents() 
        {
            AppFunc appFunc = (IDictionary events) =>
            {
                if ((events != null) && (events.Count > 0))
                {
                    List result = events.OrderBy(ev => ev.Key)
                        .Select(ev => ev.Value)
                        .ToList();
                    return result;
                }
                throw new ArgumentException("Event dictionary is null or empty.");
            };
            return appFunc;
        }
    }
}

This is something to adopt wisely, since the abuse of this practice can hurt the clarity of one's code. There is a nice explanation on C# aliases, also mentioning pros and cons, in DotNetPearls (http://www.dotnetperls.com/using-alias).