Question

Can the sequence .( ever appear in C# or VB.Net code?
(Not in a string, comment, or XML literal, EDIT: or preprocessor directive)

I’m reasonably certain that the answer is no, but I’d like to make sure.

Answer 1

The only places that . appears in the grammar are:

real-literal:
    decimal-digits   .   decimal-digits ...
    .   decimal-digits ...

namespace-or-type-name:
    namespace-or-type-name   .   identifier ...


member-access:
    primary-expression   .   identifier ...
    predefined-type   .   identifier ...

qualified-alias-member   .   identifier ...

base-access:
    base   .   identifier

unbound-type-name:
    unbound-type-name   .   identifier

qualified-identifier: 
    qualified-identifier   .   identifier

member-name:
    interface-type   .   identifier

indexer-declarator:
    type   interface-type   .   this   

(The … means I have elided the remainder of the production rule.) In none of these cases is a .( valid as . is either followed by digits, a valid identifier, or the keyword this.