#780 – The Case for Immutable structs

You can run into problems when a struct is mutable.  (E.g. when used as a property, in a collection, or when modifying a struct through a method).

You can avoid problems by being careful about how you use the struct and by being aware of value type semantics (you get a copy of the value-typed object, rather than a reference to it).

You can also avoid problems by making your custom structs immutable.  This means:

• Exposing the data in the struct exclusively through read-only properties
• Defining methods that modify the value in the struct to return a new instance of the struct

For an example of this, look at the System.DateTime type, which is a struct.  Its properties all have only a get accessor, so you can’t change them.  And methods that change the value of a DateTime, e.g. AddDays, return a new instance of a DateTime.