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Internal Representation of Properties

Many programmers (especially those who program with a C-based language such as C++) tend to

name traditional accessor and mutator methods using get_ and set_ prefixes (e.g., get_Name() and

set_Name()). This naming convention itself is not problematic as far as C# is concerned. However, it

is important to understand that under the hood, a property is represented in CIL code using these

same prefixes.

For example, if you open up the EmployeeApp.exe assembly using ildasm.exe, you see that each

property is mapped to hidden get_XXX()/set_XXX() methods called internally by the CLR (see

Figure 5-10).

Figure 5-10.

A property is represented by get/set methods internally.

Assume the Employee type now has a private member variable named empSSN to represent

an individual’s Social Security number, which is manipulated by a property named

SocialSecurityNumber (and also assume you have updated your type’s custom constructor 

and DisplayStats() method to account for this new piece of field data).