In C#, is “this” keyword required? [duplicate]

Answer 1

in the case below this is absolutely required. But you can get around it by choosing variable names carefully. In my humble opinion, there is nothing wrong with the example below and I do not mind having to use this. In fact, I often use this even when it is not required just to prompt intellisense and auto-complete in my IDE.

internal class Something
{
    private string name;
    public Something(string name)
    {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

Answer 2

No, this is purely optional in almost all cases. The only reason it is required in your example is to disambiguate between local variables and parameters and member variables that happened to have the same identifier name.

You could avoid the use of this by renaming either the parameter or the field to something unique.

Answer 3

in your example, if you don't use "this" something worse will happen: "Variable Hiding"

Answer 4

In C# it is most common to either name the private variable _Name or m_Name. This also makes it easy to visually match up Properties because if you have a property Name, which uses a local private variable _Name, it is easy to see quickly what it is for.

Without the this keyword in your example, all you are doing is assigning the local variable to the local variable (and not to the private variable). Which is why it compiles, but won't do what you think it is doing.

Answer 5

Yes, you need it in your code example. C# will always assume you mean local variable, so if a member variable and a local variable exist with the same name, you must use this, otherwise it will be assumed that you are referring to the local variable.

In your code example, if you neglect the this, you are effectively assigning name (or alias)'s value to itself (thus accomplishing nothing).

Answer 6

It's optional, unless you have a member variable named 'name', in that case, your line there will be assigning to itself.

I always like to access all member variables with "this", just to be explicit. Some people like to use "_" as a prefix, or even "m".