Properties C# 2.0 – Not Elegant Enough

Prior to .NET 2.0, there wasn’t the facility in C# to opt the visibility level for the get and set property or indexers. And i take my comment in my previous post that C# does not provide the facility of having different visibility levels for the get and set accessors. While that is partly correct, it is no more in C# 2.0.

And obviously it isn’t in the easy and elegant way. Take a look at this code snippet:-

public bool LogToStdError
{
  get
  {
    return _log2StdError;
  }
  protected set
  {
    _log2StdError = value;
  }
}

I do not have to explain the code except there are some restrictions while having different visibility levels for the get/set accessors of a property.

1. You can provide an explicit visibility either for get or set. Hence the following code will throw an error:-

public bool LogToStdError
{
  protected get
  {
    return _log2StdError;
  }
  protected set
  {
    _log2StdError = value;
  }
}

2. The visibility thus explicitly specified must be a subset restrictive than of the property declaration. For example, if the property declaration is protected, then the get/set accessor cannot be like say public. So the following code throws an error:-

protected bool LogToStdError
{
  get
  {
    return _log2StdError;
  }
  public set
  {
    _log2StdError = value;
  }
}

I feel that these restrictions are stupid, and this resulted because of the syntax. I just thought of some ideas for a bit elegant syntax for the property definition.

1. The get and set accessors individually have to specify the visibility level.

bool LogToStdError
{
  public get
  {
    return _log2StdError;
  }
  property set
  {
    _log2StdError = value;
  }
}

2. The property declaration syntax must not bear any visibility level unless the associated get/set accessors do not bear any. For example, in the property definition below, the get/set accessors are public:-

public bool LogToStdError
{
  get
  {
    return _log2StdError;
  }
  set
  {
    _log2StdError = value;
  }
}

and as per this property definition, the get/set accessors are protected:-

protected bool LogToStdError
{
  get
  {
    return _log2StdError;
  }
  set
  {
    _log2StdError = value;
  }
}

3. If there are visibility levels specified neither in the property definition nor in the accessors, then the default visibility level as specified for C# I guess internal will be applied for the property accessors. Hence the get/set accessors are internal for the following property:-

bool LogToStdError
{
  get
  {
    return _log2StdError;
  }
  set
  {
    _log2StdError = value;
  }
}