[C#] Accessors - get and set cleanliness

While looking at some example code, I bumped into some syntax that looked like a shorthand for declaring get and set methods for a given property - and I thought "well hey, isn't that cool".

Turns out that in C#, this is exactly the case...

"The accessor of a property contains the executable statements associated with getting (reading or computing) or setting (writing) the property. The accessor declarations can contain a get accessor, a set accessor, or both."

Instead of writing something like this which I do all the time:

class myClass
{
  private int myProp;
  public void getMyProp() { return myProp; }
  public void setMyProp(int newProp) { myProp = newProp; }
}

We can do this in C#:

class myClass
{
  private int myProp;
  pubic int MyProp
  {
    get { return myProp; }
    set { myProp = value; }
  }
}

This is a little cleaner and allows us to access the get and set functionality in a very straight forward manner:

• int whee = myClassInstance.myProp;

• instead of --> int whee = myClassInstance.getMyProp();

• myClassInstance.myProp = 22
• instead of --> myClassInstance.setMyProp(22);
  

A few things to note:

• Both the private property, and the public property containing the accessor functions may have very similar names, but do not confuse them.
• May contain only set [write], only get [read] or both [read/write].
• The 'value' seen in the set accessor is a C# keyword. It is a free variable that is created by the complier, and no other variables within the set accessor may share that name [duh].
  
• There's more to it when talking about inheritance and abstract classes, but perhaps I'll save that for another day.
  
Can also be done for a public member variable, although to me this seems a little silly since you can directly access a public variable anyways. I just added this to show that the syntax was possible.


class myClass
{
  public myPublicProp
  {
    get { return myPublicProp; }
    set { myPublicProp = value; }
  }
}

MSDN Documentation