C# 0 The Complete Reference

y

 coordinate to the same value as the 

x

coordinate. Of course, it is wise to use such “default arguments” carefully because 

their misuse could easily confuse users of your classes.

Object Initializers

C# 3.0 added a new feature called 

object initializers

 that provides another way to create an 

object and initialize its fields and properties. (See Chapter 10 for a discussion of properties.) 

Using object initializers, you do not call a class’ constructor in the normal way. Rather, you 

specify the names of the fields and/or properties to be initialized, giving each an initial 

value. Thus, the object initializer syntax provides an alternative to explicitly invoking a 

class’ constructor. The primary use of the object initializer syntax is with anonymous types 

created in a LINQ expression. (Anonymous types and LINQ are described in Chapter 19.) 

However, because the object initializers can be used (and occasionally are used) with a 

named class, the fundamentals of object initialization are introduced here.

Let’s begin with a simple example:

// A simple demonstration that uses object initializers.

using System;

class MyClass {

  public int Count;

  public string Str;

}

class ObjInitDemo {

  static void Main() {

    // Construct a MyClass object by using object initializers.

    MyClass obj = new MyClass { Count = 100, Str = "Testing" };

    Console.WriteLine(obj.Count + " " + obj.Str);

  }

}

This produces the following output:

100 Testing

As the output shows, the value of