Is it better to use Enumerable.Empty() as opposed to new List() to initialize an IEnumerable?

Question

Suppose you have a class Person :

public class Person
{
   public string Name { get; set;}
   public IEnumerable Roles {get; set;}
}
         


        

Answer 1

Assuming you actually want to populate the Roles property somehow, then encapsulate that by making it's setter private and initialising it to a new list in the constructor:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public IList Roles { get; private set; }

    public Person()
    {
        Roles = new List();
    }
}

If you really really want to have the public setter, leave Roles with a value of null and avoid the object allocation.