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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-19T14:44:26+00:00

I often want to write something like this: new Form { Text = Caption,

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I often want to write something like this:

new Form
{
    Text = "Caption",
    Controls =
    {
        new Button { Text = "Button 1", Click = (s, e) => MessageBox.Show("Button 1 Clicked"), Location = new Point(10, 10) },
        new Button { Text = "Button 2", Click = new EventHandler(Button2Clicked), Location = new Point(10, 40) },
        new Button { Text = "Button 3", Click = Button3Clicked, Location = new Point(10, 70) },
    },
}

Initializer syntax is just sugar, so why can’t the compiler figure out how to generate code for an event subscription?

Gimme some sugar, baby!

When initializer syntax was invented, someone must have thought about events and rejected them. I’ve been trying to imagine what the rationale might have been and am coming up blank.

Is it because an event is a multi-cast object that might have more than one subscriber? No, this is an initialization process; There can be no other subscribers. [Updated] Not true, initializers are applied post-construction and an object can subscribe to its own events.

A note to Eric: I’ve heard the Why doesn’t C# implement feature X speech. In this case, someone was already there, implementing initializers.

Updated

There seems to be contention/confusion because I used Click = in my example. The actual syntax is not relevant to the question. It could just as easily be Click += which mirrors the way you have to add a handler normally. I prefer the former because it’s consistant with the rest of the initializer syntax, but ultimately I don’t care, just so long as I can subscribe to an event in an initializer list.

Another Update

I do realize that adding the feature now is probably unlikely. The first issue that comes to mind is that Intellisense has to be updated. There are probably many other things that would hinder adding this feature now. My question is: Why didn’t they add it in the first place. There must have been something compelling that warrented the ‘nay’ vote.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I cannot see any reason why they could not have provided this small teaspoon of sugar, I guess they just didn’t!

    There is already quite a lot of syntactic sugar involved in events, if simply declare an event on a class without providing your own implementation, the compiler is providing a delegate backing field for you, plus add / remove ‘method’ implementations. ALso, when you add an event handler, the compiler uses delegate inference, allowing you to simply point to a method, rather than create a delegate that represents the method.

    Interestingly, Mono C# does allow you to add an event handler in an object initializer:

    http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Jul-27-1.html

    Time to switch to Mono 😉

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