Patrick Smacchia

While reading the excellent book 'The C# Programming Language', I just found a somewhat unexpected point in the C#2 grammar. As illustrated by the following example, characters '<' and '>' can sometime be interpreted both as comparison operators and as beginning and ending of a types parameter list.

class C<U,V>
{
    public static void Fct1()
    {   
        int U = 6;
        int V = 7;
        int Fct2 = 9;
        Fct3(Fct2<U, V>(20)); // call Fct3(int)
        Fct3(Fct2<U, V>20); // call Fct3(bool,bool)
    }
    public static int Fct2<A, B>(int i) { return 0;}
    public static void Fct3(int i) { return; }
    public static void Fct3(bool b1, bool b2) { return; }
}

class Program                          
{
   static void Main(string[] args)
   {
       
   }
}

This dilemma is solved by the following rule: if the character that follows the '>' character is in the following list, then the compiler choose the type parameter list case.

(  )  ]  >  :  ;  ,  .  ?