What's the meaning of "apostrophe + number" in the object type of properties with generics (eg. "Collection`1")?

.net, c#, fully-qualified-naming, generics, reflection

Solution

The ``1` means a generic type, with 1 generic parameter.

One way of getting the string is by using the System.CodeDom, as suggested by @LukeH:

using System;
using System.CodeDom;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Microsoft.CSharp;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            using (var p = new CSharpCodeProvider())
            {
                var r = new CodeTypeReference(typeof(Dictionary<string, int>));
                
                Console.WriteLine(p.GetTypeOutput(r));
            }
        }
    }
}

An alternative method is here. See below for @jaredpar's code:

public static string GetFriendlyTypeName(Type type) {
    if (type.IsGenericParameter)
    {
        return type.Name;
    }

    if (!type.IsGenericType)
    {
        return type.FullName;
    }

    var builder = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
    var name = type.Name;
    var index = name.IndexOf("`");
    builder.AppendFormat("{0}.{1}", type.Namespace, name.Substring(0, index));
    builder.Append('<');
    var first = true;
    foreach (var arg in type.GetGenericArguments())
    {
        if (!first)
        {
            builder.Append(',');
        }
        builder.Append(GetFriendlyTypeName(arg));
        first = false;
    }
    builder.Append('>');
    return builder.ToString();
}

Problem

Original source

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