Home/ Questions/Q 56823
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-10T17:35:41+00:00

Some text before the code so that the question summary isn’t mangled. class Tree

  • 0

Some text before the code so that the question summary isn’t mangled.

class Tree {     public event EventHandler MadeSound;      public void Fall() { MadeSound(this, new EventArgs()); }      static void Main(string[] args)     {         Tree oaky = new Tree();         oaky.Fall();     } }

I haven’t used events much in C#, but the fact that this would cause a NullRefEx seems weird. The EventHandler reference is considered null because it currently has no subsribers – but that doesn’t mean that the event hasn’t occurred, does it?

EventHandlers are differentiated from standard delegates by the event keyword. Why didn’t the language designers set them up to fire silently in to the void when they have no subscribers? (I gather you can do this manually by explicitly adding an empty delegate).

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. You need to understand what your event declaration is actually doing. It’s declaring both an event and a variable, When you refer to it within the class, you’re just referring to the variable, which will be null when there are no subscribers.

    • 0