Why does normal markup inside an @Using Html.BeginForm need an @?

Question

related: MVC3 Razor using Html.BeginForm problem

When I make an HTML form for MVC 3/VB with the Razor engine, I would expect to be able to do it like this:

@Using Html.BeginForm("Action", "Controller")
    <fieldset>
        @* Other form code and values *@
    </fieldset>
End Using

But if I do that I get "BC32035: Attribute specifier is not a complete statement. Use a line continuation to apply the attribute to the following statement." I need to add an @ character before the opening tag to avoid this error. Can someone explain why?

Answer 1

When using Razor with C#, what you describe is possible, because parser can determine the transition from code to markup because of the explicit '<' characters in html is not a valid C# token. VB.NET supports inline XML directly in code, so the Razor parser cannot determine that you have transitioned back to markup, so you have to be more explicit.