Question

In my naming convention, I use _name for private member variables. I noticed that if I auto-generate a constructor with ReSharper, if the member is a keyword, it will generate an escaped keyword. For example:

class IntrinsicFunctionCall
{
    private Parameter[] _params;
    public IntrinsicFunctionCall(Parameter[] @params)
    {
        _params = @params;
    }
}

Is this generally considered bad practice or is it OK? It happens quite frequently with @params and @interface.

EDIT: This doesn’t actually add a prefix to the variable name. If accessing that variable from a different .NET language, i.e. F#, it would just be params. In fact, in C#, if you write @x it’s exactly equivalent to x.

Answer 1

Using language keywords as identifiers impacts the readability. Granted, proper syntax high-lightning helps a bit, but it’s better to not rely on the editor features only.

Consider the following (exaggeratedly unreadable, obviously :-)) code:

interface IInterfaceFactory<T>
{
   T CreateInstance(params object[] @params);
}

class SomeClass
{
    IMyOtherInterface _interface;

    public IMyOtherInterface Interface
    {
        get { return _interface; }
    }

    public SomeClass(params object[] @params)
    {
        SomeInterface<IMyOtherInterface> interfaceFactory = new SomeInterface<IMyOtherInterface>();
        IMyOtherInterface @interface = interfaceFactory.CreateInstance(@params);
        if (@interface->IsValid())
        {
            _interface = @interface;
        }
        else
        {
            _interface = interfaceFactory.CreateInstance();
        }
    }
}