The legacy .NET Framework vbc lowers anonymous types differently from
Roslyn: ToString builds its result with a StringBuilder instead of one
String.Format call, no DebuggerBrowsable/DebuggerHidden attributes are
emitted even in debug builds, and in optimized builds the DebuggerDisplay
attribute precedes CompilerGenerated in metadata order. The None/Optimize
test configurations only run on machines where that compiler is
installed, which is why the fixture did not cover them yet.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
A C# anonymous type is immutable and compares every member. VB's are neither
unless every property is declared 'Key': otherwise the properties are settable
and only the 'Key' ones take part in Equals and GetHashCode. Writing such a
type as 'new { ... }' silently gave it value equality and made any assignment
to one of its properties fail to compile, so only an anonymous type with no
settable property is treated as one; the rest keep their own declaration.
Those declarations carry the shape VB gave them, so the round-trip preserves
both mutability and 'Key' equality. Their names are the remaining obstacle,
since the VB compiler separates the parts with '$': the type, its backing
fields and any local named after it are renamed to use '_' instead, and a
comment on the declaration says why the type is spelled out.
Generated variable names are now rejected when they would not be legal C#
identifiers, which also stops a display class from lending its unspeakable
name to a local in the NoLocalFunctions output.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
VBPretty had no coverage of VB's anonymous types, so nothing caught that their
use sites decompiled to the raw metadata names while their definitions were
hidden from the output. The expected C# is written as it should read once the
generated-name predicates agree with each other; it fails until then.
Roslyn 2.10 targeting .NET Core 2.2 is branched off with #if: there the query
operator calls are not restored to extension-method syntax, so no query
expression is formed and the lowered form survives.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
The renamed-Implements case exposed a gap: the accessor-method
declarations did not include the explicit-interface-implementation
forwarders generated from .override directives, so decompiled types did
not implement their interfaces and same-name implementations lost their
interface mapping. DecompileParameterizedProperty now emits the same
forwarder stubs as the ordinary method path.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
C# cannot declare a named property with parameters: only the type's
default member gets indexer syntax, and reusing it via [IndexerName]
collapses for types with several differently-named indexed properties,
static properties, or explicit interface implementations. Emitting the
accessors as ordinary methods is the only fully general compilable
form, matches how C# consumes such properties (Roslyn exposes the
accessors of properties it cannot bind as regular methods, the same
pattern C# 14 made user-facing for extension-member disambiguation),
and round-trips call sites to identical IL. Call sites already lower
to direct accessor calls.
The property-level attributes are kept on the first accessor under the
'property:' attribute target: it is not valid on methods, so csc emits
nothing for it (CS0657 warning) and recompilation neither loses the
attributes from the source nor misapplies them to the accessor. A
comment on the first accessor documents the deliberate deviation.
Visual Studio's metadata-as-source view drops such properties'
attributes entirely.
The assembly tree and tooltips are unaffected: they keep rendering the
property node with its parameter list. Known limitation, inherent to
any C# projection: recompiling the output produces plain methods, so
VB.NET consumers of the recompiled assembly lose property syntax.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
C# has no syntax for named properties with parameters, so the expected
output declares the accessors as ordinary methods, keeps the
property-level attributes under the inert 'property:' attribute target
(ignored by csc with CS0657), and consumes the properties through
direct accessor calls, which Roslyn permits exactly for properties
whose shape C# cannot bind. Red against the current decompiler, which
emits a parameterless property whose body references the vanished
parameters.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5:Claude Code
Christoph Wille
Siegfried Pammer
Peter Crabtree
ElektroKill
Daniel Grunwald
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