Question

Possible Duplicate:
Why use getters and setters?

I see this a fair bit in code examples…

private List<Car> cars;

public List<Car> Cars
   {
      get { return this.cars; }
      set { this.cars = value; }
   }

What’s the benefit of that over just:

public List<Car> cars;

?

Thank you.

Answer 1

this is a property, a property allows you to control the set/get operations and perform other tasks when a value is set or get.

For example you could check if the cars list is null in the get and in case is null you can create and assign a new List to cars then return cars.