Bill McCarthy explained this to me in an email.
He wrote about it in this excellent article in Visual Studio Magazine “Drill Down on Anonymous Types“.
But it still bit me in the ass!
So I am stamping this into my memory:
| in a query | results in |
| …select cust.CustomerID.cust.CompanyName… | Immutable anonymous type |
| …select New With { .CustomerID=cust.CustomerID, .CompanyName=cust.CompanyName} … | Mutable anonymous type |
| …select New With { Key .CustomerID=cust.CustomerID, Key.CompanyName=cust.CompanyName} … | Immutable anonymous type |
| Direct creation of object | |
| New With { .CustomerID=cust.CustomerID, .CompanyName=cust.CompanyName} | Mutable anonymous type |
| New With { Key .CustomerID=cust.CustomerID, Key .CompanyName=cust.CompanyName} | Immutable anonymous type |
And just in case someone who really needs this stumbles on this post, two clarifications:
- All anonymous types are immutable in C#.
- Mutable means changeable, editable. Immutable means written in stone.
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An extension of what you are saying…All properties of the anonymous type that are marked with "Key" are immutable. Other properties are no immutable.As you say, C# uses entirely immutable types. VB gives you the option of fully immutable types, fully mutable types and anonymous types in which some things can be changed and others are immutable. Flexibiity is good, if occasionally confusing.
I didn’t want to say it quite that way only because then I have to further explain how the shortcut method in the first example is interpreted by VB as a shortcut for all Key’d properties. It’s a mouthful and Bill explains it so nicely.I look forward to more from you on this one, Kathleen! 🙂
Thanks ! 🙂
I still can not edit cells in my dataGridView and below is my query, what am i doing wrong?
Function LoadEmpRedundancy() As Object
Using context As New MyEntity
Dim myBooks = From b In context.Books _
Select New With { _
b.BookID, _
b.BookDate, _
b.BookName, _
b.Col1, _
b.Col2, _
b.Col3, _
b.Col14, _
b.OtherCols}
dataGridView1.AutoGenerateColumns = False
dataGridView1.DataSource = Redundancy
Return myBooks
End Using
End Function