Question

So since I’m still wanting to create a simple Pac-Man clone by December, I’m currently teaching myself C# in order to use the XNA Game Studio 3.1, which I find the best answer with readily available documentation to learn from as well as being kinda future-safe.

Anyway, the problem comes from a book I’m reading in which a function is declared as this:

public void TransformVectorByReference()>
{
    /* ...stuff... */
}

I’m assuming the internals aren’t important, because the compiler is complaining about the ´>` symbol at the function declaration. However, multiple functions are declared like this and all of them are throwing errors of the type:

; expected.

Could anybody tell me what this function does/point me to a previous SO question because I’m not finding any answers via a search since I don’t know what to call the funny thing.

The book I got this code snippet from is Sam’s Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0. If anybody has any other, better alternatives to this book, I would be most happy to see them.

Edit:

I’ve added one example function, from three-five functions, that are almost identical, but one uses the > keyword. However, it was pointed out that this might not be the author’s fault, but rather the way the book was produced/error-corrected.

public void TransformVectorByReference()
{
    Matrix rotationMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationY( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) );
    // Create a vector pointing the direction the camera is facing.
    Vector3 transformedReference;
    Vector3.Transform(ref cameraReference, ref rotationMatrix, out transformedReference);
    // Calculcate the position the camera is looking at.
    Vector3.Add(ref cameraPosition, ref transformedReference, out cameraTarget);
}

public void TransformVectorByReferenceAndOut()>
{   
    Matrix rotationMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationY( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) );
    // Create a vector pointing the direction the camera is facing.
    Vector3 transformedReference;
    Vector3.Transform( ref cameraReference, ref rotationMatrix, out transformedReference );
    // Calculate the position the camera is looking at.
    Vector3.Add( ref cameraPosition, ref transformedReference, out cameraTarget );
}

Answer 1

The > is erroneous and should be removed.