VS 2017 Bug or new features?

Question

After upgrading to VS 2017 I got the following error from this code (which has always been working perfectly)

byte[] HexStringToByteArray(string hex)     {         if (hex.Length % 2 == 1)             throw new Exception("The binary key cannot have an odd number of digits");          byte[] arr = new byte[hex.Length >> 1];          for (int i = 0; i < hex.Length >> 1; ++i) // Error in this line         {             arr[i] = (byte)((GetHexVal(hex[i << 1]) << 4) + (GetHexVal(hex[(i << 1) + 1])));         }          return arr;     } 

Exception:

Error 1: The variable 'i' cannot be used with type arguments Error 2: 'hex' is a variable but is used like a type     

the solution was to surround the expression by parentheses.

for (int i = 0; i < (hex.Length >> 1); ++i) 

But that made me wonder is this a bug or a new functionality? Thanks.

Answer 1

Thanks for reporting this. This is a confirmed regression in the precedence of parsing. This fix will ship in the first quarterly release of VS2017 at the latest.

Information on the fix: https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/pull/16834