Quote:Original post by gharen2
You're overlooking the fact that you have multiple references to the same instance.

The reference returned by the get property is a separate reference to the same instance. If you change the retrieved reference to something else, the original reference inside the class will still point to the original instance.

In your example, I could retrieve a reference to sfFoo, and set that reference to null. However, the reference to sfFoo inside the Foo class is still intact.

In my opinion this makes the const keyword unnecessary.

Quote:Original post by Sneftel
I don't think you quite understand the purpose of const. It's not to guarantee that a particular area of memory will remain constant across a certain period of time. Rather, it forces a distinction between mutator and nonmutator methods, which turns out to be really useful for uncovering a variety of common logic errors.

Quote:Original post by davepermen
this wouldn't help in this specific case...

Foo x = new Foo;x.SomeFOO.Value = 13453;

The OP wants to prevent such manipulation of the original object stored in the property. This, afaik, is not possible. I've ran into this problem once till today, but I could work it around by a little redesigning.

class SomeFoo{   public readonly Value;}class Foo{  private SomeFoo sfFOO = new SomeFoo();  public SomeFoo SomeFOO { get { return sfFOO; } } }}class test{  Foo x = new Foo;  x.SomeFOO.Value = 13453; <- A readonly field cannot be assigned to.}

Quote:Original post by Niksan2
Wouldn't marking it read only only allow variable asignment to be in the constructor, so would would be readonly everywhere.

public class SomeFoo    {        internal int theValue;        public int Value { get { return theValue; } }    }    public class Foo    {        private SomeFoo sfFOO = new SomeFoo();        public SomeFoo SomeFOO { get { return sfFOO; } }         public void ChangeTheValue()        {            sfFOO.theValue = 33;        }    }//The test class is in another assembly.class test    {        public test()        {            Foo x = new Foo();            x.SomeFOO.Value = 13453; //error.        }    }

Quote:Original post by Niksan2
but using the internal keyword doesn't that mean it has to sit in its own assembly?