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c#namespaces
Dan
Dan

Reputation: 1185

C# Namespace question: Must avoid namespace containing any class name overlap?

I'm finding some frustration with the way C# handles namespaces when I want to reference a class whose class name happens to be identical to part of the current class's namespace. This will produce a compiler error, "'Class' is a namespace but is used like a type".

Consider the following code sample, which demonstrates the problem:

namespace A.B.C
{
    public class Y
    {      
    }
}

namespace X.Y.Z
{
    public class Class1
    {
        public Y MyProp;
    }
}

In this case, I want to use the class "Y" from the namespace "A.B.C". But because "Y" is also one of the parts of the namespace, C# treats "Y" as a namespace, not a type.

I can get around this by fully qualifying the class name, "A.B.C.Y", or using an alias, but my general preference would be for C# not to treat "Y" as a namespace in this context. Often I have code, such as test code, that contains similar namespaces as classes its testing, and this kind of class/namespace collision means having to be a lot more verbose in setting things up.

I'm not sure what the process is called, but it seems that in resolving classes and namespaces, C# will walk up the namespaces until it finds a part of the namespace that matches. In this case, it walks up and finds Y. Is there a way to tell C# not to walk up, not to allow this partial namespace matching?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 888

Answers (1)

Sweeper
Sweeper

Reputation: 274460

If you write using A.B.C; (the namespace that Y is in) inside namespace X.Y.Z, the error goes away:

namespace X.Y.Z
{
    using A.B.C;
    public class Class1
    {
        public Y MyProp;
    }
}

Upvotes: 8

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