CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#inheritanceproperties
weberc2
weberc2

Reputation: 7908

C# - Properties versus accessor methods?

From what I can tell, properties are used to provide accessor method-esque functionality; however, they do so at the cost of normal method inheritance behavior. Are there any advantages to using properties versus conventional setter/getter methods? What are the pros/cons of properties and accessor methods?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1048

Answers (2)

Tejs
Tejs

Reputation: 41246

I think you might be confused. In your examples, the above methods should be accessible. For example, given this set of types, the following should work:

public class Base
{
    public virtual int Datum { get; set; }
}

public class Derived : Base
{
    public override int Datum
    {
        get { return 12; }
        // set method remains as normal, with just the get overriden
    }

    public void SetDatumMethod(int newValue)
    {
        Datum = newValue; // Datum as a property is still accessible
    }
}

The derived class still inherits the property. Properties really are just syntactic sugar in C# (mostly), as the compiler is generating set_Datum(int x) and get_Datum() methods behind the scenes for you. The property get/set methods can still be overridden individually as shown above.

The advantage of using properties is that they have additional semantic meaning; they "contain" or "represent" data in some fashion, not a method for generating the data.

Upvotes: 1

Aghilas Yakoub
Aghilas Yakoub

Reputation: 28980

Visual Studio debugger executes the getter method when watching an object. That is, property accessors are executed at unpredictable times and should thus not cause any discernable side-effects. Abusing properties can lead to difficult bugsto resolve .

Another reason to use a method is that order retrieval is likely to be parameterized.

A good practice is for property access to be computationally cheap; client code should not be forced to place the property value into a local variable - it's premature optimization.

Upvotes: 0

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