How do I use a C# reserved keyword as a property name without the @ prefix?

c# keyword reserved
Thomas picture Thomas · Jun 6, 2012 · Viewed 9.5k times · Source

I need to design a class where one property name has to be return, but when I create a property name like return then I get an error.

After some research I found out that one can use a reserved keyword as a property or variable name by adding a @ prefix in C#, or by enclosing it in square brackets [] in VB.NET. For example: 

var @class = new object();

So here is my class design code.

public class Person
{
    string _retVal;

    public string @return
    {
        get { return _retVal; }
        set { _retVal = value; }
    }
}

...
Person p = new Person();
p.@return = "hello";

Now I am not getting any error, but when I try to access property name like return then I need to write the name like @return, which I don't want. I want to access the property name like p.return = "hello"; instead of p.@return = "hello"; so I'd like to know if there is any way to do that?

Answer

Marc Gravell picture Marc Gravell · Jun 6, 2012

You can't. It is a reserved keyword. That means "you can't". Contrast to "contextual keywords" which usually means "we added this later, so we needed it to work in some pre-existing scenarios".

The moderate answer here is: use @return.

A better answer here is: rename your property. Perhaps ReturnValue.

There is also the option of, say, Return - but you might need to think about case-insensitive languages too.

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