What are anonymous types in C#?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How should anonymous types be used in C#?

What are anonymous types in C#, and when should they be used?

Answer 1

Straight from the horse's mouth: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397696.aspx

Answer 2

Anonymous types are types created on the fly typically in order to return results in a LINQ statement. Here's an example from MSDN

var productQuery = 
    from prod in products
    select new { prod.Color, prod.Price };

A new type with the read-only properties Color and Price is created and the query returns instances of this type when enumerated.

foreach(var product in productQuery) {
    Console.WriteLine(product.Color);
}

product will be of the anonymous type defined above.

Anonymous types are useful for returning several properties from a query without having to define a type explicitly for that purpose.

Answer 3

Possible duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/48668/how-should-anonymous-types-be-used-in-c