Question

Platform: Visual Studio 2008 SP1 with Resharper 4.1, .NET 3.5

I have a class with a static method, GetProperty<T> that returns a property value lazily.

private static T GetProperty<T>(T backingField, Func<T> factory)      where T : class  {     if (backingField == null)         backingField = factory();     return backingField; } 

But when I use above method to return a property, I am getting two warnings that says that private backing fields are not assigned. But they are assigned later on only when they are needed.

Is this warning ignorable?
— Or —
Is my appoach to loading a property flawed?

Answer 1

Your method is flawed. To take this approach you need to make backingField a ref parameter.

private static T GetProperty<T>(ref T backingField, Func<T> factory) 

Then on GetProperty, pass ref _ImagXpress or ref _PdfXpress.

The way you’re doing it now just assigns a new value to the parameter, not to the actual backing field.