Is # inside razor syntax called operator? - asp.net

Question

I just bought a book on ASP.NET MVC With Razor View Engine. There is a subsection called Usage of # Operator and this subsection title makes me ... well, uncomfortable.
Is # inside the razor view engine called operator?
UPDATE
I guess my question is not so clear. I want to know if # is an operator inside the razor view engine. For example, < > = != >= => these are called as operator inside C# language. Is it same for # inside Razor view engine?

Answer 1

I think the reason for you discomfort is that the # token (when talking about it from a parsing perspective, though the word character should also do) is overloaded to indicate a number of different situations. Let's examine what those are:
Write a value to the output:
#this.Value
Indicate a code block transition:
#{
var foo = 1;
foo += 1;
}
Indicate a code statement transition:
<div>
#if(foo) {
// code
}
</div>
Indicate an escape to markup till the end of the line
#if(foo) {
foo = false;
#: value printed to output
}
Indicate directive statements:
#inherits MyCustomBaseType
Indicate special code blocks:
#section Foo {
<div />
}
#helper Bar(int param) {
param += 1;
}
Delimit comment blocks:
#*
This is a comment
*#
Escape the # character:
Email me at myemail##example.com
In my opinion only the first usage can be considered as an operator. The operand (i.e. everything else that follows the # up to but excluding the first markup-significant whitespace character) is passed as the parameter to the Write() method. All other usages don't have any clearly identifiable operands or require additional tokens (the * in the comment block, etc) to be indentified.

Answer 2

According to the official pages on Razor, you can find one example here, it does not seem that this is called an operator.
From the linked page:
You add code to a page using the # character
(my emphasis)
I also found numerous other pages on that same site, all referring it to just the "# character", so in that sense it isn't considered an operator.
<opinion>
However, if you read on Wikipedia on the topic of operators, then:
Syntactically operators usually contrast to functions. In most languages, functions may be seen as a special form of prefix operator with fixed precedence level and associativity, often with compulsory parentheses e.g. Func(a) (or (Func a) in LISP). Most languages support programmer-defined functions, but cannot really claim to support programmer-defined operators, unless they have more than prefix notation and more than a single precedence level. Semantically operators can be seen as special form of function with different calling notation and a limited number of parameters (usually 1 or 2).
(again, my emphasis)
Then I would argue that # is in fact an operator. It is a symbol with a specific meaning, and you could argue that you're "escaping out of the surrounding context to do something else", sort of like a function call.
In other words, while the word operator does not appear in the website articles I've seen so far, I would consider it to be an operator nonetheless.
</opinion>

Answer 3

Hmm, are you referring to the Fonts and Colors section of the Tools > Options dialog in Visual Studio? If so, no it isn't an Operator, it's "HTML Server-Side Script". The "functions", "section" and other razor-specific keywords are also this color.
Otherwise, yes it is an operator from a technical description. I'm not entirely sure what other distinction you are looking for.

Answer 4

No, the # character is not used as an operator. It's only the choise of that author to call it so.
For example, in the blog post introducing Razor it's not described as an operator anywhere.
There doesn't seem to be an official or de-facto term for it yet. Personally I would call it a tag, as it's used in the markup code along with other tags, and it's used as a replacement for the <% %> script tag.
I guess that it's not really incorrect to call it an operator, but it's not commonly used. As the razor tag contains C# or VB code which also can contain operators, it can get confusing.

Answer 5

The # character starts inline expressions, single statement blocks, and multi-statement blocks.
On Scott Gu's blog, he doesn't refer to it as an operator but there are lots of other developers who do. Personally, I don't see this as an operator but more of an identifier.

Answer 6

As far as I know are symbols like >, != and && called equality, relational or conditional operators. The # symbol does not seem to fit in any of those groups so I must say, no, it cannot be called an operator. On the other hand however, it does indicate that 'some operation' is performed which makes it rather likely to be called an operator.

Answer 7

The # symbol is not an operator, it is an indicator which indicates that a razor statement begins.
It is comparable with <?php ?> in php. This indicates to the compiler/interpreter where your code is
e.g.
#Html.ActionLink(...)
a #(...) gives you the oportunitie to do some coding int there
e.g
#(
int a = 0;
int b = 4;
int c = a + b;
)
I hope this helps you on the way