Question

If both get and set are compulsory in C# automatic properties, why do I have to bother specifying ‘get; set;’ at all?

Answer 1

ERROR: A property or indexer may not be passed as an out or ref parameter

If you didn’t specify {get; set;} then the compiler wouldn’t know if it’s a field or a property. This is important becasue while they ‘look’ identical the compiler treats them differently. e.g. Calling ‘InitAnInt’ on the property raises an error.

class Test {     public int n;     public int i { get; set; }     public void InitAnInt(out int p)     {         p = 100;     }     public Test()     {         InitAnInt(out n); // This is OK         InitAnInt(out i); // ERROR: A property or indexer may not be passed                            // as an out or ref parameter     } } 

You shouldn’t create public fields/Variables on classes, you never know when you’ll want to change it to have get & set accessors, and then you don’t know what code you’re going to break, especially if you have clients that program against your API.

Also you can have different access modifiers for the get & set, e.g. {get; private set;} makes the get public and the the set private to the declaring class.