Property procedures vs. fields

[Andrew J. Marshall]

If I have a class Fool with an attribute Bark implemented as a field

Public Class Fool
Public Bark As Boolean
End Class

and I want to "upgrade" it to be implemented as a property procedure

Public Class Fool
Protected MyBark As Boolean
Public Property Bark() As Boolean
Get
Return Me.MyBark
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As Boolean)
Me.MyBark = Value
End Set
End Property
End Class

, will this cause any problems for consumers of my class?

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Public Class Fool
Public Bark As Boolean
End Class

and I want to "upgrade" it to be implemented as a property procedure

Public Class Fool
Protected MyBark As Boolean
Public Property Bark() As Boolean
Get
Return Me.MyBark
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As Boolean)
Me.MyBark = Value
End Set
End Property
End Class

, will this cause any problems for consumers of my class?

What problems would you expect? Changing the interface of the class?

 

[Rob Windsor [MVP]]

Andrew,

The "upgraded" (using property procedure) version is the preferred (best
practice) method. Also, in certain cases you cannot data bind to a public
field so you need to implement a property procedure.

Just a note, the suggested naming convention for your protected field would
be "_bark"

 

[Andrew J. Marshall]

Yes, an interface/binary compatibility issue. The object browser seems to
know if an attribute was coded as a field or a property, and that made me a
little nervous.