c# - Project builds fine with Visual Studio but fails from the command line

Question

I have a solution which builds fine when running through Visual Studio 2015 but when I run from the command line I run into the error

error CS1056: Unexpected character '$' on this line

var CutOffTextFragment = deadLineTime.Deadline.Minute == 0 ? $"{deadLineTime.Deadline:htt}" : $"{deadLineTime.Deadline:h:mmtt}"

deadLineTime.Deadline is a DateTime object, the code will return either XAM/PM or X:XXAM/PM

I think this is occuring becuase the build script is not using C#6. At present this script cant be changed to use c# 6

If this is the case, can anyone help me depreciate the code so it works with C# 5

Answer 1

That feature is a syntactic sugar is for C#6, try to install the latest version of the framework 4.6.2 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53345

Then go to your Project properties and change on the Application option on Target framework to point to the latest. You don't need to change your code to replace the string interpolation with string.Format method to fix it.

If you are still getting this error, is because, the compiler that is running your build is not the latest version of C#, try to add the Microsoft.Net.Compilers, from Nuget and compile again, that should resolve the issue. If you want to avoid to install this package, try to open your .csproj and take a look on the ToolsVersion that should be pointing to the version 12, then change it to 14, but make sure you have installed the latest version of the MSBuild from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48159 or go to C:Program Files (x86)MSBuild14.0Bin, there you should have this folder with the csc.exe compiler. If even then that doesn't resolve the issue, then try to follow this steps https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb383985.aspx. In my experience, just getting the package from Nuget solved the problem. Hope this helps