Question

I have this:

AudioPlayer player = new AudioPlayer();
player.Directory = vc.Directory;
player.StartTime = vc.StarTime;
player.EndTime = vc.EndTime;

But I could have this:

AudioPlayer player = new AudioPlayer
{
    Directory = vc.Directory,
    StartTime = vc.StarTime,
    EndTime = vc.EndTime
};

If I convert to ‘new way of writing things’, what do I gain besides unreadability? Will it make me closer to lambda functions ( => ) ?

Does it have something to do with RAII?

ADDITION:

Some answered that normal initialization could left the object in ‘invalid’ state after for example setting only a Directory property – my observation here is that is someone who was designing the object probably designed it in a way that only values that MUST be really entered are entered through real constructor, and all other could be freely modified later.

Answer 1

Consider you want to pass your newly created object to some method (and not do anything else with it). You can either write it the old way:

AudioPlayer player = new AudioPlayer();
player.Directory = vc.Directory;
player.StartTime = vc.StarTime;
player.EndTime = vc.EndTime;
some.Method(player);

Or you can use object initializers:

some.Method(
  new AudioPlayer
  {
      Directory = vc.Directory,
      StartTime = vc.StarTime,
      EndTime = vc.EndTime
  });

Using object initilizers, you can clearly see what the code does and that the object is not used later.

Also, I think the readability (and “writability”) is better: you don’t have to repeat the variable name endlessly.