Are there any reasons to use private properties in C#?

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I just realized that the C# property construct can also be used with a private access modifier:

private string Password { get; set; }

Although this is technically interesting, I can't imagine when I would use it since a private field involves even less ceremony:

private string _password;

and I can't imagine when I would ever need to be able to internally get but not set or set but not get a private field:

private string Password { get; }

private string Password { set; }

but perhaps there is a use case with nested / inherited classes or perhaps where a get/set might contain logic instead of just giving back the value of the property, although I would tend to keep properties strictly simple and let explicit methods do any logic, e.g. GetEncodedPassword().

Does anyone use private properties in C# for any reason or is it just one of those technically-possible-yet-rarely-used-in-actual-code constructs?

c# properties access-modifiers

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185

The primary usage of this in my code is lazy initialization, as others have mentioned.

Another reason for private properties over fields is that private properties are much, much easier to debug than private fields. I frequently want to know things like "this field is getting set unexpectedly; who is the first caller that sets this field?" and it is way easier if you can just put a breakpoint on the setter and hit go. You can put logging in there. You can put performance metrics in there. You can put in consistency checks that run in the debug build.

Basically, it comes down to : code is far more powerful than data. Any technique that lets me write the code I need is a good one. Fields don't let you write code in them, properties do.

answered 2010-07-22T15:16:34.403

Are there any reasons to use private properties in C#?

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