C# Language Specification

Attributes

Much of the C# language enables the programmer to specify declarative information about the entities defined in the program. For example, the accessibility of a method in a class is specified by decorating it with the method-modifiers public, protected, internal, and private.

C# enables programmers to invent new kinds of declarative information, called attributes. Programmers can then attach attributes to various program entities, and retrieve attribute information in a run-time environment. For instance, a framework might define a HelpAttribute attribute that can be placed on certain program elements (such as classes and methods) to provide a mapping from those program elements to their documentation.

Attributes are defined through the declaration of attribute classes (§17.1), which may have positional and named parameters (§17.1.2). Attributes are attached to entities in a C# program using attribute specifications (§17.2), and can be retrieved at run-time as attribute instances (§17.3).

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