In C#, is there a way to write custom object initializers for new data-types?

Question

In C#, there\'s the \"standard\" initializer technique { Property1 = \"a\", Property2 = \"b\" }, and there are a couple of special variants for collections (list and dictionary)

Answer 1

If the nodes of your tree are easy to construct, i.e. can be initialized from their value, then you can make things terser than ChaosPandion's answer, by adding an extra method:

class Tree : IEnumerable
{
    public string Value { get; set; }

    public void Add(Tree t) { ... }

    // Add this method
    public void Add(string s)
    {
        Add(new Tree { Value = s });
    }

    public IEnumerator GetEnumerator() { ... }
}

So:

{ item1 { item2 item3 item4 } { item5 item6 } }

Becomes:

new Tree { "item1", new Tree { "item2", "item3", "item4" }, new Tree { "item5", "item6" } };