reference to generic type in XML code comment

user492238 picture user492238 · Feb 17, 2011 · Viewed 16.9k times · Source

As I know, in a XML comment for a C# type/method, it is possible to reference a generic type in a tag like so:

///<see cref="name.space.typename&lt;T&rt;(paramtype)">

But I think, there was another syntax, which is less clumsy? Something, to get rid of those html entities '<'? I cannot find it right now. Can somebody help?

Answer

Metro Smurf picture Metro Smurf · Feb 17, 2011

Here's a citation of a no longer available, good article on documentation:

The compiler team decided to improve this by allowing an alternate syntax to refer to generic types and methods in doc comments. Specifically, instead of using the open and close angle-brackets it’s legal to use the open and close curly braces. The example above would then become:

class Program
{
    /// <summary>
    /// DoSomething takes a <see cref="List{T}"/>
    /// </summary>
    void DoSomething(List<int> al) { }
}

So, in your case:

///<see cref="name.space.typename{T}(paramtype)"/>

Here are a couple of newer references from Microsoft: