Possible breaking change in MVC4 Razor that can be fixed with "@:@"

Question

I recently upgraded my website from ASP.NET MVC3 (Razor) to MVC4 (Razor2), and in doing so found what seemed like a breaking change in the Razor view engine. The scenario (greatly simplified) is shown below. ``` @model IEnumerable @{ Layout = null; }

@foreach (var x in Model) { @string.Format("Foo bar: {0}", x) // Errors in MVC4/Razor2 }

``` This works fine in MVC3/Razor, however in MVC4/Razor2 the `string.Format` line results in an error of: Unexpected "string" keyword after "@" character. Once inside code, you do not need to prefix constructs like "string" with "@". If you remove the `@`, the view engine then demands that you terminate the `string.Format` line with a semicolon. However, ReSharper then warns (rightly so): Return value of pure method is not used. The two fixes I've found for this are either to use ``: ``` @string.Format("The value {0}", x) ``` Or a more curious approach using `@:@`:…

Accepted Answer

Seems like a bug. It works with `String`:

```
@foreach (var x in Model)
{
    @String.Format("Foo bar: {0}", x)
}
```

Possible breaking change in MVC4 Razor that can be fixed with "@:@"

Solution

Problem