#260 – How Properties Look Under-the-Covers

The typical pattern for implementing a property in a C# class is shown below–you define a private backing variable in which to store the property value, as well as get and set accessors that read/write the property value.

    public class Dog
    {
        // An typical instance property
        private string name;
        public string Name
        {
            get { return name; }
            set { name = value; }
        }
    }

We can use the IL DASM tool to take a look at how this property is actually implemented.  Start up the IL Disassembler tool and then do a File | Open and load the .exe containing the property shown above.  You’ll see the following:

We see our private backing variable–name–as well as two methods that represent the get/set accessors–get_Name and set_Name. These are the methods that the compiler generates, which implement the accessors.