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C#

James Hammond
James Hammond
1,297 Points
Posted by James Hammond
James Hammond
1,297 Points

How does the code know what to actually get and set?

Ive just gone through the get and set video in C#.

I am wondering how does the program actually know what to get and set if thats all the code says to do?

like adding {get; set;} onto the end of something without directly saying what its getting and setting?

1 Answer

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

When you use the get and set keyword without specifying any code C# automatically creates a private anonymous backing field for the property, and sets up a default getter and setter method for the field.

Which means that this code:

class Person
{
    private string name;
    public string Name
    {
        get
        {
            return name;
        }
        set
        {
            name = value;
        }
    }
}

And this code:

class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

Is functionally equivalent with each other.

James Hammond
James Hammond
1,297 Points
James Hammond
James Hammond
1,297 Points

so you can access the get of Name to see what it is, but access set and change the default? like is it just a placeholder?

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

I'm not sure I entirely understand your question. A property acts pretty much like a normal field variable except that the get and set method is called automatically when the property is accessed or assigned. So you can access and assign it like this:

Person person = new Person(); // Create a Person object
person.Name = "James"; // This would call the get method
System.Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // This would print out "James"

With the default get and set method that C# generates the property will act exactly like a field variable. If you define your own get and set method then you can change what happens when it is accessed or something is assigned to it.

James Hammond
James Hammond
1,297 Points
James Hammond
James Hammond
1,297 Points

Makes sense now. Thanks!