List readonly with a private set

Question

How can I expose a List so that it is readonly, but can be set privately?

This doesn\'t work:

public List myList          


        

Answer 1

I think you are mixing concepts.

public List myList {get; private set;}

is already "read-only". That is, outside this class, nothing can set myList to a different instance of List

However, if you want a readonly list as in "I don't want people to be able to modify the list contents", then you need to expose a ReadOnlyCollection. You can do this via:

private List actualList = new List();
public ReadOnlyCollection myList
{
  get{ return actualList.AsReadOnly();}
}

Note that in the first code snippet, others can manipulate the List, but can not change what list you have. In the second snippet, others will get a read-only list that they can not modify.