Should you use accessor properties from within the class, or just from outside of the class? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Aside from the point made by others, whether to use an accessor or a field directly may need to be informed by semantics. Some times the semantics of an external consumer accessing a property is different from the mechanical necessity of accessing its value by internal code.

Eric Lippert recently blogged on this subject in a couple of posts:-

automatic-vs-explicit-properties
future-proofing-a-design

Answer 2

If using an Get method leads to this kind of error, you should access the value directly. Otherwise, it is good practice to use your accessors. If you should modify either the getter or setter to take specific actions in the future, you'll break your object if you fail to use that path.

Answer 3

If I am understanding it right, you are trying to access a property from within it's implementation (by using a method that calls the same property in the property's implementation code). I am not sure if there any official standards regarding this, but I would consider it a bad practice, unless there would be a specific need to do it.

I always prefer using private members within a class instead of properties, unless I need the functionality property implementation provides.