Reserved Words and Language Independence
Microsoft’s .NET Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification allows code written in 40+ different programming languages to be combined together into a final product. Because of this, identifier/reserved word collisions can occur when code implemented in one language tries to execute code written in another language. For example, a Visual Basic.NET library may contain a class definition such as:
' Class Definition of This in Visual Basic.NET: Public Class this ' This class does something... End ClassIf this is compiled and distributed as part of a toolbox, a C# programmer, wishing to define a variable of type “this” would encounter a problem: 'this' is a reserved word in C#. Thus, the following will not compile in C#:
A similar issue arises when accessing members, overriding virtual methods, and identifying namespaces.
In order to work around this issue, the specification allows the programmer to (in C#) place the at-sign before the identifier which forces it to be considered an identifier rather than a reserved word by the compiler.
// Using This Class in C#: @this x = new @this; // Will compile!For consistency, this usage is also permitted in non-public settings such as local variables, parameter names, and private members.
Read more about this topic: Reserved Word
Famous quotes containing the words reserved, words, language and/or independence:
“We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“This is an approach to that universal language which men have sought in vain.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)