Why is an Add method required for { } initialization?

Question

To use initialization syntax like this:

var contacts = new ContactList
{
    { \"Dan\", \"dan.tao@email.com\" },
    { \"Eric\", \"ceo@google.com\" }
};
<         


        

Answer 1

It's because the initialization statement is shorthand for the CLR. When it gets compiled into bytecode, it will call the Add method you've defined.

So you can make the case that this initialization statement is not really a "first class" feature, because it doesn't have a counterpart in IL. But that's the case for quite a lot of what we use, the "using" statement for example.