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

Question

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 1

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.

Answer 2

No way to achieve this because reserved Keywords are predefined, reserved identifiers that have special meanings to the compiler.

it's better you change name of property and use it in you code...something as given in @Marc answer...

Answer 3

You can rename namespaces like this:

using Test = System.Diagnostics;