System.Xml.XmlSerializer and Classes with Generic Type Parameters

[Hoss]

Discovered this today after alot of head-scratching, just thought I
would toss it out into cyberspace in hopes that it would help someone.

This of course, will not compile

public class Woot`Class - notice the backtick
{

}

However, you can in fact create a type with a name like that -
including backticks, [, _+, - and other illegal characters using
Reflection.Emit. If you then do the following

new System.Xml.XmlSerializer(TypeWithAFunkyName)

you will get the marvelously ambiguous and utterly worthless error
message, "Input string was not in a correct format."

So, if you ever get that message from the XmlSerializer constructor -
consider the actual name of the type you are passing in !

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

That's the thing, they are not illegal characters. If you look at the
reflection namespace, as specifically the FullName AssemblyQualifiedFullName
properties on the Type class, you will that is how generic type parameters
are represented through reflection (using the back tick).

They are just not valid in C#, as C# uses a different syntax for
specifying generic type parameters.