7.6.4.1Identical simple names and type names

In a member access of the form E.I, if E is a single identifier, and if the meaning of E as a simple-name (§7.6.2) is a constant, field, property, local variable, or parameter with the same type as the meaning of E as a type-name (§3.8), then both possible meanings of E are permitted. The two possible meanings of E.I are never ambiguous, since I must necessarily be a member of the type E in both cases. In other words, the rule simply permits access to the static members and nested types of E where a compile-time error would otherwise have occurred. For example:

struct Color { public static readonly Color White = new Color(...); public static readonly Color Black = new Color(...);

public Color Complement() {...} }

class A { public Color Color; // Field Color of type Color

void F() { Color = Color.Black; // References Color.Black static member Color = Color.Complement(); // Invokes Complement() on Color field }

static void G() { Color c = Color.White; // References Color.White static member } }

Within the A class, those occurrences of the Color identifier that reference the Color type are underlined, and those that reference the Color field are not underlined.

7.6.4.2Grammar ambiguities

The productions for simple-name (§7.6.2) and member-access (§7.6.4) can give rise to ambiguities in the grammar for expressions. For example, the statement:

F(G<A,B>(7));

could be interpreted as a call to F with two arguments, G < A and B > (7). Alternatively, it could be interpreted as a call to F with one argument, which is a call to a generic method G with two type arguments and one regular argument.

If a sequence of tokens can be parsed (in context) as a simple-name (§7.6.2), member-access (§7.6.4), or pointer-member-access (§18.5.2) ending with a type-argument-list (§4.4.1), the token immediately following the closing > token is examined. If it is one of

( ) ] } : ; , . ? == != | ^

then the type-argument-list is retained as part of the simple-name, member-access or pointer-member-access and any other possible parse of the sequence of tokens is discarded. Otherwise, the type-argument-list is not considered to be part of the simple-name, member-access or pointer-member-access, even if there is no other possible parse of the sequence of tokens. Note that these rules are not applied when parsing a type-argument-list in a namespace-or-type-name (§3.8). The statement

F(G<A,B>(7));

will, according to this rule, be interpreted as a call to F with one argument, which is a call to a generic method G with two type arguments and one regular argument. The statements

F(G < A, B > 7); F(G < A, B >> 7);

will each be interpreted as a call to F with two arguments. The statement

x = F < A > +y;

will be interpreted as a less than operator, greater than operator, and unary plus operator, as if the statement had been written x = (F < A) > (+y), instead of as a simple-name with a type-argument-list followed by a binary plus operator. In the statement

x = y is C<T> + z;

the tokens C<T> are interpreted as a namespace-or-type-name with a type-argument-list.