I've recently been having fun trying to get the type of a generic list using reflection.
The VS2005 MSDN doco suggests trying something like..
Type classType = Type.GetType(“System.Collections.Generic.List[[System.String,Mscorlib]],Mscorlib“,true);
I kept getting a a TypeLoadException : Could not load type 'System.Collections.Generic.List' from assembly mscorlib.
After a bit of deliberating, I decided to try the following..
System.Collections.Generic.List<String> stringList = new System.Collections.Generic.List<String>();
Type classType = stringList.GetType();
Console.WriteLine(classType.ToString());
Guess what I got...
System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]
So what is this `1 about, it seems to be added to generic classes.
From a bit more investigation it seems to represent the number of generic parameters (dimensions) associated with the class, so Dictionary is Dictionary`2. While a generic class like MyGeneric<A,B,C,D,E> is actual MyGeneric`5.