Question

I’ve got something like this in my property/accessor method of a constructor for my program.

using System;


namespace BusinessTrips
{
    public class Expense
    {
        private string paymentMethod;


        public Expense()
        { 
        }
        public Expense(string pmtMthd)
        {               
            paymentMethod = pmtMthd;


        }   


      //This is where things get problematic
        public string PaymentMethod
        {
            get    
            {
                return paymentMethod;
            }
            set
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(" "))
                    paymentMethod = "~~unspecified~~";
                else paymentMethod = value;
            }
        }



    }
}

When a new attribute is entered, for PaymentMethod, which is null or a space, this clearly does not work. Any ideas?

Answer 1

do you perhaps just need to replace string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(" ") with string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value) ?

---

From your posted code, you need to call:

this.PaymentMethod = pmtMthd;

instead of

paymentMethod = pmtMthd;

The capital p will use your property instead of the string directly. This is why it’s a good idea to use this. when accessing class variables. In this case, it’s the capital not the this. that makes the difference, but I’d get into the habit of using this.