What book? Need info on ... Binary files, vb Structures, Threading etc...

I've bought three books on VB.net.

None of them mention threading, (at this point, I don't even know what that is!) binary files (creating, searching, etc...) dynamic arrays with the size determined, and changed, at run time, (in c++ we would use pointers) structures (which I'm guessing I could use to write to binary files?) etc... I'd like to know about collections (which are, as far as I can tell, sort of like arrays). But none of the books I've bought, or can find, really discuss these topics.

Maybe I'm looking for a college textbook? I don't know. But I don't need a book about how to use the controls, create a form etc... I need a good book or two that discusses some more complex stuff so I can write some real programs.

Also, something discussing classes and VB.net would be good. Not on HOW to create a class, declare an object etc... But rather the theory of how to use classes with VB.net. I'm struggeling with this. (But I confess I always stuggle with classes in any language.)

For instance, in this thread here: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...ighlight=array

There is this code:

VB Code:

Public Structure index
        <VBFixedString(15)> Dim myid As String
        <VBFixedString(30)> Dim myname As String
        <VBFixedString(30)> Dim myaddress As String
      End Structure

They're writing to binary file? using structures?

Well. Where do you find this info (other than the msdn which seems disorganized to me and all but useless)

The main book i use is Francesco Balena's Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .Net - its about 1300 pages in length and covers a lot of topics (an entire chapter on threading for example) - it might not cover everything you want to know but it will give you a pretty good grounding

I would recommend that book as well. It was a great reference tool for me when I was learning .NET.

As far as the theory of classes any book on OOP (Object Oriented Programming) should cover that.

As a broad selection of answers I don't see structures being used all that much in VB.NET. There is little difference between them and Classes so generally classes are used instead. The primary difference is only that Structures are Value types and classes are Reference types.

The quickest and easiest route to convert objects to binary is to use Serialization, which can be researched here or else where online.

A collection is pretty much a wrapper around an array to make it strongly typed and add common functionality to it.

This one? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...298420-7880903

Yup.

Any others that anyone would suggest to go along with this one?