Question

I’ve thought of this before and it came to mind again when reading this question.

Are there any plans for ‘extension properties’ in a future version of C#?

It seems to me they might be pretty stright-forward to implement with a little more ‘compiler magic’. For example, using get_ and set_ prefixes on extension method names would turn that method into an extension property:

    public class Foo     {         public string Text { get; set; }     }     public static class FooExtensions     {         public static string get_Name(this Foo foo)         {             return foo.Text;         }         public static void set_Name(this Foo foo, string value)         {             foo.Text = value;          }     } 

Are there any technical restrictions which would prevent this? Would this create too much stuff going on behind the scenes? Not important enough to be worth the effort?

Answer 1

The official site for feature requests is http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio.

There has already been a request for extension properties here.

Microsoft’s answer on 7/29/2008 included the following:

Extension properties are a common request, and we actually got quite far with a design for the next version of the language, but ultimately had to scrap it because of various difficulties. It is still on our radar.