Difference Between variable and property ?

The following are the some important differences between variables and properties.

Variable:

**********

1) Declaration: Single declaration statement

 

2) Implementation: Single storage location



3) Storage: Directly associated with variable's value

 

4) Executable code: None

 

5) Read and write access: Read/write or read-only

 

6) Custom actions (in addition to accepting or returning value): Not possible

 



Property:

********

1) Declaration: Series of statements in a code block



2) Implementation: Executable code (property procedures)



3) Storage: Typically has internal storage not available outside the property's containing class or module. 

	Property's value might or might not exist as a stored element 1



4) Executable code: Must have at least one procedure

 

5) Read and write access: Read/write, read-only, or write-only



6) Custom actions (in addition to accepting or returning value): Can be performed as part of setting or retrieving property value

Mark This Response as Answer
--
Chandu
http://www.dotnetfunda.com/images/dnfmvp.gif

Nandkishorre, if this helps please login to Mark As Answer. | Alert Moderator

This is very good questions.
Below are the points why use properties over fields, 5 reasons:

1 - Fields can’t be used in Interfaces
You can’t enforce the existence of a field in an object’s public contract through an interface. For properties though it works fine.

2 - Validation
While your application currently may not require any validation logic to set a particular value, changing business requirements may require inserting this logic later. At that point changing a field to a property is a breaking change for consumers of your API. (For example if someone was inspecting your class via reflection).

3 - Binary Serialization
Changing a field to a property is a breaking change if you’re using binary serialization. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons VB10’s auto-implemented properties have a “bindable” backing field (i.e. you can express the name of the backing field in code) – that way, if you change an auto-implemented property to an expanded property, you can still maintain serialization compatibility by keeping the backing field name the same (in C# you’re forced to change it because it generates backing fields with unbindable names).

4 - A lot of the .NET databinding infrastructure binds to properties but not fields
I’ve heard arguments on both sides as to whether or not that’s a good thing, but the reality is that’s the way it works right now. (Note from me: WPF bindings work on properties)

5 - Exposing a public field is an FxCop violation

Other different are:-
1. It may not be necessary today, but if it becomes necessary later it's a breaking change
2. Databinding works only on properties, not on fields (I think, not a big databinding user)
3. It allows to insert validations, logging, breakpoints when accessing the value.

You can also see the below link :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sk5e8eth.aspx

Happy Coding.

Nandkishorre, if this helps please login to Mark As Answer. | Alert Moderator