C# args without a main method?

Question

I am new to the C# world but have seen other programming languages give access to command-line arguments from places like main function/method, sys.argv, etc.

It was unusual to see the following statement placed globally in the boilerplate ASP.NET Core Web App MVC (Version 6.0) Program.cs file of Visual Studio:

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

Hovering over that parameter inside my IDE does seem to suggest it is indeed string[] args, but where is the entry point?

Answer 1

I hope someone brings in further interesting details, but as a minimum, a bit of searching yielded the following result (short answer — Top-level Statements) from Microsoft Docs:

Starting in C# 9, you can omit the Main method, and write C# statements as if they were in the Main method [...] For information about how to write application code with an implicit entry point method, see Top-level statements.

The page covering top-level statements makes it more clear:

args

Top-level statements can reference the args variable to access any command-line arguments that were entered. The args variable is never null but its Length is zero if no command-line arguments were provided.