Question

Can someone please fill in the blanks for me, including a brief description of use and perhaps a code snippet? I’m well aware of the top two in particular, but a little hazy on the last one especially:

• () – Used for calling a function, object instantiation, passing parameters, etc.
• {} – Used for defining and adding elements to arrays or sets.
• [] – Used for forcing an object to be treated as a type rather than keyword.
• <> – Used for… ?

For Example, I see stuff like this all the time, but still not quite sure what the brackets means…

<TemplateContainer(GetType(TemplateItem))> _
Public Property MessageTemplate As ITemplate

Answer 1

In this case it’s used for the Attribute declaration. It can also be used in XML Literals as follows:

<TestMethod>
Public Sub ThisIsATest()
  If 1 <> 0 Then
    Dim foo = <root>
                <child>this is some XML</child>
              </root>
  End If
End Sub