#202 – All Fields in an Object Are Automatically Initialized

When you declare an instance of a value type without initializing it, the compiler prevents you from referencing the uninitialized variable.

            int x;

            Console.WriteLine(x);   // Compile-time error: [Use of unassigned local variable 'x']

If you declare and instantiate a reference type, the internal fields and properties are all initialized by setting all of the bits of the underlying memory for each item to 0.  This equates to:

• Reference types = null
• Numeric types = 0
• Enum types = 0
• Char type =
• Boolean type = false

This means that value types declared inside the object are automatically initialized when the object is created.

For example, assume that we create a new Person object without calling a constructor that initializes any fields.

            Person p = new Person();

We can look at the new Person object in the debugger to see that all of its fields have been initialized.