Accessor Methods in .NET

[gothic_type]

I know this is a bit late, but here's another reason - making stuff "readonly". Say you have a collection in your class and you want people to be able to access it, but you don't want them to be able to alter the actual reference:

public class MyClass
{
  private ArrayList myList;

  public ArrayList List
  {
    get
    {
      return myList;
    }
  }

  public MyClass()
  {
    myList = new ArrayList();
  }
}

Not the best example ever, but it means that they can add/remove/etc stuff from the collection, but they can't change which collection myList points to.

To answer your other question, as far as I know, the C# compiler will take your property and generate a get_MyProperty() method and a set_MyProperty() method. If you download Reflector you can see this by opening an assembly (either a CLR .dll or .exe) and looking for a property then expanding it. It'll also let you view the CIL that's generated for it.

ac