Question

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Best Practice: Initialize class fields in constructor or at declaration?

this is just a simple and even a little stupid doubt that me and my friends raised while talking about our current project.

What I wanna know is the difference between calling a method to set a variable inside and outside the constructor of a class using C#, like in the example below:

Case 1:

public class Test
{
    string myVar = GetValue();

    public Test()
    {
    }
}

Case 2:

public class Test
{
    string myVar;

    public Test()
    {
        myVar = GetValue(); 
    }
}

Are there performance differences or any “pattern violations” when using any of these approaches? I would really appreciate if anyone could tell me which of these approaches is better and what really happens when I use them on a compiler level.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

AFAIK the only difference is the field initialization (your first example) is triggered first – It’s still essentially treated as constructor code. There are no performance gains by choosing one over the other it’s really a matter of preference.

One thing to be aware of is execution order as it can change based on your class hierarchy.