Protected/private field vs public property

[Gawel]

Let say I have:

public class Class1
{
protected int _counter;

public void MakeSomethingWithCounter()
{
_counter = 10;
or <--------------------------which way is morr accurate ?
Counter = 10;
}

public int Counter
{
set { _counter = value; }
get { return _counter; }
}
}

What kind of approach should I choose ?
Property or field ? Property is a method, therefore
using property can be less efficient.....but I can be wrong.


Gawel

 

[Mattias Sjögren]

What kind of approach should I choose ?

Personally I tend to use the variable directly unless I want to run
any validation code I might have in the property.

Property or field ? Property is a method, therefore
using property can be less efficient.....but I can be wrong.

For simple accessors like the one you had, the variable access is most
likely inlined and so there's no actual performance penalty in using
the property.



Mattias

 

[Jeff Louie]

If you think a level of indirection may be useful in the future or you
want read
only/set only behavior, also consider using a property. I believe that
you can
declare a property as virtual, so that you can override a property.
Shadowing
a field gives you different behaviour.

http://www.geocities.com/jeff_louie/OOP/oop8.htm

Regards,
Jeff

 

[cody]

public class Class1

{
protected int _counter;

public void MakeSomethingWithCounter()
{
_counter = 10;
or <--------------------------which way is morr accurate ?
Counter = 10;
}

public int Counter
{
set { _counter = value; }
get { return _counter; }
}
}

What kind of approach should I choose ?
Property or field ? Property is a method, therefore
using property can be less efficient.....but I can be wrong.

You should always only use the property unless you explicitly don't want to
run validation code or similar.
Properties are mostly inlined so there is no performance penalty.

 

[Gawel]

You should always only use the property unless you explicitly don't want to
run validation code or similar.
Properties are mostly inlined so there is no performance penalty.

Thank you all.


Gawel