what's the meaning of the brackets in Property definition?

Question

What is the meaning of the square brackets around the name of a property in the definition ?

Example :

Public Property [Date] As String 

Answer 1

To use reserved keywords as identifiers, the brackets must be used to distinguish between the identifier and the keyword:

dim [String] As String

public sub [Stop]
end sub

On msdn it says:

Any program element — such as a variable, class, or member — can have the same name as a restricted keyword. For example, you can create a variable named Loop. However, to refer to your version of it — which has the same name as the restricted Loop keyword — you must either qualify it by preceding it with its full namespace, or enclose it in square brackets ([ ]), as in the following examples:

Reference here

Answer 2

This syntax allows you to use a reserved word as the name of a member or variable. Not recommended though IMHO from a code maintainability point of view (though see comments below for an alternative point of view on this particular point)!

Particularly not recommended if you're going to declare a property called "Date" as a string, but that's a separate issue...

Answer 3

Date is a reserved keyword in VB.NET, but can be used as a property or variable name if enclosed in square brackets:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ksh7h19t(v=vs.90).aspx