How should I use properties when dealing with read-only List members

Question

When I want to make a value type read-only outside of my class I do this:

public class myClassInt
{
    private int m_i;
    public int i {
        get { ret         


        

Answer 1

JP's answer regarding returning IEnumerable is correct (you can down-cast to a list), but here is a technique that prevents the down-cast.

class ExposeList
{
  private List _lst = new List() { 1, 2, 3 };

  public IEnumerable ListEnumerator
  {
     get { return _lst.Select(x => x); }  // Identity transformation.
  }

  public ReadOnlyCollection ReadOnly
  {
     get { return _lst.AsReadOnly(); }
  }
}

The identity transformation during enumeration effectively creates a compiler-generated iterator - a new type which is not related to _lst in any way.