Question

I just started using Razor instead of the WebForms-ViewEngine. Now in my Razor-View i have something like this:

@{
  int i = 42;
  string text;
  if (i == 42)
  {
    text = "i is 42!";
  }
  else //i is not 42 //<- Error here
  {
    text = "i is something else";
  }
}

I get a warning and at runtime it get an exception in the else line:

Expected a “{” but found a “/”. Block statements must be enclosed in “{” and “}”. You cannot use single-statement control-flow statements in CSHTML pages.

Apparently the compiler doesn’t like comments between the else and the {. I also tried commenting with @* and /*, which gave similar error-messages.

Is there anyway to make a comment in razor like I want it?

Disclaimer:

Yes i know i could fix it simply like this:

@{
  int i = 42;
  string text;
  if (i == 42)
  {
    text = "i is 42!";
  }
  else
  { //i is not 42
    text = "i is something else";
  }
}

However it doesn’t fit our coding guidelines and having the comment on the same line makes my intentions more clear.

Answer 1

That’s how the Razor parser is built. You could always submit a bug/feature request on MS connect if you don’t like the way it is and hope that people will vote for it and it will be fixed/implemented in a future version of the parser. Personally I wouldn’t because I don’t care (see below why).

This being said, why care? I mean you are not supposed to write code in a Razor page. A Razor page is intended to be used as a view. In ASP.NET MVC a view is used to display some information from the view model that is passed to it from the controller action. Markup primary, mixed with HTML helpers and displaying information from the view model. But C# code is a no no. So what you call code and what you have shown in your question has strictly nothing to do in a Razor view.