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Difference ways of calling methods within the same class in C# [duplicate]

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I was curious about how other people use the this keyword. I tend to use it in constructors, but I may also use it throughout the class in other methods. Some examples:
In a constructor:
public Light(Vector v)
{
this.dir = new Vector(v);
}
Elsewhere
public void SomeMethod()
{
Vector vec = new Vector();
double d = (vec * vec) - (this.radius * this.radius);
}

I don't mean this to sound snarky, but it doesn't matter.
Seriously.
Look at the things that are important: your project, your code, your job, your personal life. None of them are going to have their success rest on whether or not you use the "this" keyword to qualify access to fields. The this keyword will not help you ship on time. It's not going to reduce bugs, it's not going to have any appreciable effect on code quality or maintainability. It's not going to get you a raise, or allow you to spend less time at the office.
It's really just a style issue. If you like "this", then use it. If you don't, then don't. If you need it to get correct semantics then use it. The truth is, every programmer has his own unique programing style. That style reflects that particular programmer's notions of what the "most aesthetically pleasing code" should look like. By definition, any other programmer who reads your code is going to have a different programing style. That means there is always going to be something you did that the other guy doesn't like, or would have done differently. At some point some guy is going to read your code and grumble about something.
I wouldn't fret over it. I would just make sure the code is as aesthetically pleasing as possible according to your own tastes. If you ask 10 programmers how to format code, you are going to get about 15 different opinions. A better thing to focus on is how the code is factored. Are things abstracted right? Did I pick meaningful names for things? Is there a lot of code duplication? Are there ways I can simplify stuff? Getting those things right, I think, will have the greatest positive impact on your project, your code, your job, and your life. Coincidentally, it will probably also cause the other guy to grumble the least. If your code works, is easy to read, and is well factored, the other guy isn't going to be scrutinizing how you initialize fields. He's just going to use your code, marvel at it's greatness, and then move on to something else.

There are several usages of this keyword in C#.
To qualify members hidden by similar name
To have an object pass itself as a parameter to other methods
To have an object return itself from a method
To declare indexers
To declare extension methods
To pass parameters between constructors
To internally reassign value type (struct) value.
To invoke an extension method on the current instance
To cast itself to another type
To chain constructors defined in the same class
You can avoid the first usage by not having member and local variables with the same name in scope, for example by following common naming conventions and using properties (Pascal case) instead of fields (camel case) to avoid colliding with local variables (also camel case). In C# 3.0 fields can be converted to properties easily by using auto-implemented properties.

I only use it when absolutely necessary, ie, when another variable is shadowing another. Such as here:
class Vector3
{
float x;
float y;
float z;
public Vector3(float x, float y, float z)
{
this.x = x;
this.y = y;
this.z = z;
}
}
Or as Ryan Fox points out, when you need to pass this as a parameter. (Local variables have precedence over member variables)

Personally, I try to always use this when referring to member variables. It helps clarify the code and make it more readable. Even if there is no ambiguity, someone reading through my code for the first time doesn't know that, but if they see this used consistently, they will know if they are looking at a member variable or not.

I use it every time I refer to an instance variable, even if I don't need to. I think it makes the code more clear.

I can't believe all of the people that say using it always is a "best practice" and such.
Use "this" when there is ambiguity, as in Corey's example or when you need to pass the object as a parameter, as in Ryan's example. There is no reason to use it otherwise because being able to resolve a variable based on the scope chain should be clear enough that qualifying variables with it should be unnecessary.
EDIT: The C# documentation on "this" indicates one more use, besides the two I mentioned, for the "this" keyword - for declaring indexers
EDIT: #Juan: Huh, I don't see any inconsistency in my statements - there are 3 instances when I would use the "this" keyword (as documented in the C# documentation), and those are times when you actually need it. Sticking "this" in front of variables in a constructor when there is no shadowing going on is simply a waste of keystrokes and a waste of my time when reading it, it provides no benefit.

I use it whenever StyleCop tells me to. StyleCop must be obeyed. Oh yes.

Any time you need a reference to the current object.
One particularly handy scenario is when your object is calling a function and wants to pass itself into it.
Example:
void onChange()
{
screen.draw(this);
}

I tend to use it everywhere as well, just to make sure that it is clear that it is instance members that we are dealing with.

I use it anywhere there might be ambiguity (obviously). Not just compiler ambiguity (it would be required in that case), but also ambiguity for someone looking at the code.

Another somewhat rare use for the this keyword is when you need to invoke an explicit interface implementation from within the implementing class. Here's a contrived example:
class Example : ICloneable
{
private void CallClone()
{
object clone = ((ICloneable)this).Clone();
}
object ICloneable.Clone()
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}

Here's when I use it:
Accessing Private Methods from within the class (to differentiate)
Passing the current object to another method (or as a sender object, in case of an event)
When creating extension methods :D
I don't use this for Private fields because I prefix private field variable names with an underscore (_).

[C++]
I agree with the "use it when you have to" brigade. Decorating code unnecessarily with this isn't a great idea because the compiler won't warn you when you forget to do it. This introduces potential confusion for people expecting this to always be there, i.e. they'll have to think about it.
So, when would you use it? I've just had a look around some random code and found these examples (I'm not passing judgement on whether these are good things to do or otherwise):
Passing "yourself" to a function.
Assigning "yourself" to a pointer or something like that.
Casting, i.e. up/down casting (safe or otherwise), casting away constness, etc.
Compiler enforced disambiguation.

You should always use it, I use it to diferantiate private fields and parameters (because our naming conventions state that we don't use prefixes for member and parameter names (and they are based on information found on the internet, so I consider that a best practice))

I use it when, in a function that accepts a reference to an object of the same type, I want to make it perfectly clear which object I'm referring to, where.
For example
class AABB
{
// ... members
bool intersects( AABB other )
{
return other.left() < this->right() &&
this->left() < other.right() &&
// +y increases going down
other.top() < this->bottom() &&
this->top() < other.bottom() ;
}
} ;
(vs)
class AABB
{
bool intersects( AABB other )
{
return other.left() < right() &&
left() < other.right() &&
// +y increases going down
other.top() < bottom() &&
top() < other.bottom() ;
}
} ;
At a glance which AABB does right() refer to? The this adds a bit of a clarifier.

In Jakub Šturc's answer his #5 about passing data between contructors probably could use a little explanation. This is in overloading constructors and is the one case where use of this is mandatory. In the following example we can call the parameterized constructor from the parameterless constructor with a default parameter.
class MyClass {
private int _x
public MyClass() : this(5) {}
public MyClass(int v) { _x = v;}
}
I've found this to be a particularly useful feature on occasion.

I got in the habit of using it liberally in Visual C++ since doing so would trigger IntelliSense ones I hit the '>' key, and I'm lazy. (and prone to typos)
But I've continued to use it, since I find it handy to see that I'm calling a member function rather than a global function.

I tend to underscore fields with _ so don't really ever need to use this. Also R# tends to refactor them away anyway...

I pretty much only use this when referencing a type property from inside the same type. As another user mentioned, I also underscore local fields so they are noticeable without needing this.

I use it only when required, except for symmetric operations which due to single argument polymorphism have to be put into methods of one side:
boolean sameValue (SomeNum other) {
return this.importantValue == other.importantValue;
}

[C++]
this is used in the assignment operator where most of the time you have to check and prevent strange (unintentional, dangerous, or just a waste of time for the program) things like:
A a;
a = a;
Your assignment operator will be written:
A& A::operator=(const A& a) {
if (this == &a) return *this;
// we know both sides of the = operator are different, do something...
return *this;
}

this on a C++ compiler
The C++ compiler will silently lookup for a symbol if it does not find it immediately. Sometimes, most of the time, it is good:
using the mother class' method if you did not overloaded it in the child class.
promoting a value of a type into another type
But sometimes, You just don't want the compiler to guess. You want the compiler to pick-up the right symbol and not another.
For me, those times are when, within a method, I want to access to a member method or member variable. I just don't want some random symbol picked up just because I wrote printf instead of print. this->printf would not have compiled.
The point is that, with C legacy libraries (§), legacy code written years ago (§§), or whatever could happen in a language where copy/pasting is an obsolete but still active feature, sometimes, telling the compiler to not play wits is a great idea.
These are the reasons I use this.
(§) it's still a kind of mystery to me, but I now wonder if the fact you include the <windows.h> header in your source, is the reason all the legacy C libraries symbols will pollute your global namespace
(§§) realizing that "you need to include a header, but that including this header will break your code because it uses some dumb macro with a generic name" is one of those russian roulette moments of a coder's life

'this.' helps find members on 'this' class with a lot of members (usually due to a deep inheritance chain).
Hitting CTRL+Space doesn't help with this, because it also includes types; where-as 'this.' includes members ONLY.
I usually delete it once I have what I was after: but this is just my style breaking through.
In terms of style, if you are a lone-ranger -- you decide; if you work for a company stick to the company policy (look at the stuff in source control and see what other people are doing). In terms of using it to qualify members, neither is right or wrong. The only wrong thing is inconsistency -- that is the golden rule of style. Leave the nit-picking others. Spend your time pondering real coding problems -- and obviously coding -- instead.

I use it every time I can. I believe it makes the code more readable, and more readable code equals less bugs and more maintainability.

When you are many developers working on the same code base, you need some code guidelines/rules. Where I work we've desided to use 'this' on fields, properties and events.
To me it makes good sense to do it like this, it makes the code easier to read when you differentiate between class-variables and method-variables.

It depends on the coding standard I'm working under. If we are using _ to denote an instance variable then "this" becomes redundant. If we are not using _ then I tend to use this to denote instance variable.

I use it to invoke Intellisense just like JohnMcG, but I'll go back and erase "this->" when I'm done. I follow the Microsoft convention of prefixing member variables with "m_", so leaving it as documentation would just be redundant.

1 - Common Java setter idiom:
public void setFoo(int foo) {
this.foo = foo;
}
2 - When calling a function with this object as a parameter
notifier.addListener(this);

There is one use that has not already been mentioned in C++, and that is not to refer to the own object or disambiguate a member from a received variable.
You can use this to convert a non-dependent name into an argument dependent name inside template classes that inherit from other templates.
template <typename T>
struct base {
void f() {}
};
template <typename T>
struct derived : public base<T>
{
void test() {
//f(); // [1] error
base<T>::f(); // quite verbose if there is more than one argument, but valid
this->f(); // f is now an argument dependent symbol
}
}
Templates are compiled with a two pass mechanism. During the first pass, only non-argument dependent names are resolved and checked, while dependent names are checked only for coherence, without actually substituting the template arguments.
At that step, without actually substituting the type, the compiler has almost no information of what base<T> could be (note that specialization of the base template can turn it into completely different types, even undefined types), so it just assumes that it is a type. At this stage the non-dependent call f that seems just natural to the programmer is a symbol that the compiler must find as a member of derived or in enclosing namespaces --which does not happen in the example-- and it will complain.
The solution is turning the non-dependent name f into a dependent name. This can be done in a couple of ways, by explicitly stating the type where it is implemented (base<T>::f --adding the base<T> makes the symbol dependent on T and the compiler will just assume that it will exist and postpones the actual check for the second pass, after argument substitution.
The second way, much sorter if you inherit from templates that have more than one argument, or long names, is just adding a this-> before the symbol. As the template class you are implementing does depend on an argument (it inherits from base<T>) this-> is argument dependent, and we get the same result: this->f is checked in the second round, after template parameter substitution.

You should not use "this" unless you absolutely must.
There IS a penalty associated with unnecessary verbosity. You should strive for code that is exactly as long as it needs to be, and no longer.

How do I declare an immutable variable (value) in C#? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
variable that can't be modified
(9 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
In Scala I can write (and it will mean exactly the same thing it means in C#)
var v = 1;
v = 2;
but can't write (well, of course I can write but can't compile actually though the syntax is correct)
val v = 1;
v = 2;
Semicolons are not necessary but can be voluntarily used in Scala so I've decided to include them to let the code correspond C# more closely. val means an immutable value, a kind of a variable that can be only assigned once but, unlikely to c# consts can be initialized with a result of a run-time expression, unlikely to C# readonly fields can be introduced at any place in the code where a var variable can and, unlikely to C# immutable types is immune to a reference replacement, not just modification of the referenced object.
I enjoy the way C# introduces more and more functional coding candies in every new version of the language but miss this (arguably the most simple and the most essential) one heavily. In the majority of the cases I only assign values to my variables once so re-assignment is usually something that is not meant to happen which means a thing that is not expected and can cause a bug this way. Might I, perhaps, just be unaware of such a feature? I don't mind such a declaration looking a little bit clumsy (some F# imports perhaps, whatever they might look like in C# code).
UPDATE: As it seems there indeed is no such a feature a by now (March 2017, C# language version 7.0) and as suggested by others I have submitted an issue at the C# language design GitHub repository.

Basically, you can't - at least at the time of C#6 - with one notable exception mentioned below. Maybe something will change in future versions of C#. There were plans for "record types" for C# 7, it could open some way when paired with anonymous inline objects. However, I actually don't know what gets exactly added in C#7.
The only normal support for anything like that is at class member scope:
class Foo
{
public readonly int shoeSize; // readonly field
public int ShoeSize { get { .. } } // readonly property
public int ToeSize { get; } = 5; // readonly property with initializer
// ..etc
}
with read-only field being settable only during object member initialization or in constructor, and getters - well, should be more or less obvious.
At the scope of normal code, any 'variable' (as opposed to 'member' above, or 'constants' you mentioned) you create is (almost) always writable, and assignment semantics will always differ depending on the kind (struct/class) of the variable's type.
EDIT: I've found one! Your note about clumsy syntax got me an idea. Actually, the foreach iterator variable is guarded against assignments by the compiler, so you can use it with Enumerable.Repeat to quickly open a foreach scope that will iterate just once..
static void Main()
{
foreach(int x in Enumerable.Repeat(5/*value for X*/, 1/*single run*/))
{
x=4; // <- compile time error!
Console.WriteLine(x);
}
}
EDIT2: another option, nicer, tuple literal that is said to be added in C#7
public static void Main()
{
var pair1 = (42, "hello");
System.Console.Write(Method(pair1).message);
var pair2 = (code: 43, message: "world");
System.Console.Write(pair2.message);
}
fields/properties of a Tuple are not writable, hence such tuple-literal will be quite handy, except for the 'pair2' extra identifier to write (and .. some cost of creating and disposing a tuple object)
However, I actually don't know if they are mutable or not. They are called "tuples", so I immediately think of "Tuple<>" whose properties are readonly, but then, in this old article
Tuples are value types, and their elements are simply public, mutable fields.
Now, I don't (yet) have VS2017 installed.. It will take some time, maybe someone else will be able to check that sooner than me.

Why are increment operators possible on properties while ref is not

Say you have a class like this
public class Foo
{
public int Bar { get; set; } = 42;
}
If you try to pass the property as a ref parameter the compiler issues the error
CS0206 A property or indexer may not be passed as an out or ref
parameter
This is understandable since in practice the property in the above example is compiled into get_Bar() and set_Bar() methods. But if you use an increment operator on the property, like
var foo = new Foo();
foo.Bar++;
it works as expected. To achieve this, the compiler needs to produce something like this pseudo code:
var foo = new Foo();
int tmp = foo.get_Bar();
tmp++;
foo.set_Bar(tmp);
So in theory the compiler could do a similar thing for ref like:
var foo = new Foo();
int tmp = foo.get_Bar();
DoSomething(ref tmp);
foo.set_Bar(tmp);
Is there a technical reason why the compiler doesn't do that or was this just a design decision of the C# team?

Like HansPassant said, this was a design decision that the C# team made when writing the C# specification, so you would have to ask one of them in order to get a proper answer.
If I was to hazard a guess, though, it would be that the amount of compiler magic to get passing a property with ref would cause enough unobvious operations to happen behind the scenes as to make the solution undesirable. For example, how incrementing/decrementing a property works currently is as you say: the program assigns the value of the property's backing field to a temporary variable, performs the operation, and reassigns the result to the property. It's a straightforward process that doesn't incorporate any difficult concepts.
To do the same behind the scenes magic to pass a property with ref, however, the process becomes a bit more involved. When a value type is passed by ref, the actual value getting passed through the parameter is a pointer to the value type variable. To do this for a property, though, you would have to do something akin to your second example. That would result in the address of the temporary variable, not the property itself, to be passed to the method. That kind of behavior could cause some unforeseen and difficult to understand consequences for someone trying to manipulate the ref parameter in certain ways.
So there's my guess, that the increment operator is simple to wrap because it only deals with values, whereas the ref keyword is more complicated because it has to worry about scopes and memory addresses as well.
EDIT: Another reason that occurred to me, for a field, any manipulations inside the called method would be reflected on the field itself. These manipulations could be seen by other threads and such that accessed that field during the method's execution (best practices about concurrent field accessibility aside).
For a parameter, however, any changes that happen inside the method wouldn't be visible until the method returned and the value copied back over. This would lead to inconsistent behavior between fields and properties, the cause of which wouldn't be readily apparent.
(Personally, I think this is a more probable reason to not support ref on properties.)

Why can '=' not be overloaded in C#?

I was wondering, why can't I overload '=' in C#? Can I get a better explanation?

Memory managed languages usually work with references rather than objects. When you define a class and its members you are defining the object behavior, but when you create a variable you are working with references to those objects.
Now, the operator = is applied to references, not objects. When you assign a reference to another you are actually making the receiving reference point to the same object that the other reference is.
Type var1 = new Type();
Type var2 = new Type();
var2 = var1;
In the code above, two objects are created on the heap, one referred by var1 and the other by var2. Now the last statement makes the var2 reference point to the same object that var1 is referring. After that line, the garbage collector can free the second object and there is only one object in memory. In the whole process, no operation is applied to the objects themselves.
Going back to why = cannot be overloaded, the system implementation is the only sensible thing you can do with references. You can overload operations that are applied to the objects, but not to references.

If you overloaded '=' you would never be able to change an object reference after it's been created.
... think about it - any call to theObjectWithOverloadedOperator=something inside the overloaded operator would result in another call to the overloaded operator... so what would the overloaded operator really be doing ? Maybe setting some other properties - or setting the value to a new object (immutability) ?
Generally not what '=' implies..
You can, however, override the implicit & explicit cast operators:
http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/CSharpConversionOverload.aspx

Because it doesn't really make sense to do so.
In C# = assigns an object reference to a variable. So it operates on variables and object references, not objects themselves. There is no point in overloading it depending on object type.
In C++ defining operator= makes sense for classes whose instances can be created e.g. on stack because the objects themselves are stored in variables, not references to them. So it makes sense to define how to perform such assignment. But even in C++, if you have set of polymorphic classes which are typically used via pointers or references, you usually explicitly forbid copying them like this by declaring operator= and copy constructor as private (or inheriting from boost::noncopyable), because of exactly the same reasons as why you don't redefine = in C#. Simply, if you have reference or pointer of class A, you don't really know whether it points to an instance of class A or class B which is a subclass of A. So do you really know how to perform = in this situation?

Actually, overloading operator = would make sense if you could define classes with value semantics and allocate objects of these classes in the stack. But, in C#, you can't.

One possible explanation is that you can't do proper reference updates if you overload assignment operator. It would literally screw up semantics because when people would be expecting references to update, your = operator may as well be doing something else entirely. Not very programmer friendly.
You can use implicit and explicit to/from conversion operators to mitigate some of the seeming shortcomings of not able to overload assignment.

I don't think there's any really particular single reason to point to. Generally, I think the idea goes like this:
If your object is a big, complicated object, doing something that isn't assignment with the = operator is probably misleading.
If your object is a small object, you may as well make it immutable and return new copies when performing operations on it, so that the assignment operator works the way you expect out of the box (as System.String does.)

You can overload assignment in C#. Just not on an entire object, only on members of it. You declare a property with a setter:
class Complex
{
public double Real
{
get { ... }
set { /* do something with value */ }
}
// more members
}
Now when you assign to Real, your own code runs.
The reason assignment to an object is not replaceable is because it is already defined by the language to mean something vitally important.

It's allowed in C++ and if not careful , it can result in a lot of confusion and bug hunting.
This article explains this in great detail.
http://www.relisoft.com/book/lang/project/14value.html

Because shooting oneself in the foot is frowned upon.
On a more serious note one can only hope you meant comparison rather than assignment. The framework makes elaborate provision for interfering with equality/equivalence evaluation, look for "compar" in help or online with msdn.

Being able to define special semantics for assignment operations would be useful, but only if such semantics could be applied to all situations where one storage location of a given type was copied to another. Although standard C++ implements such assignment rules, it has the luxury of requiring that all types be defined at compile time. Things get much more complicated when Reflection and and generics are added to the list.
Presently, the rules in .net specify that a storage location may be set to the default value for its type--regardless of what that type is--by zeroing out all the bytes. They further specify that any storage location can be copied to another of the same type by copying all the bytes. These rules apply to all types, including generics. Given two variables of type KeyValuePair<t1,t2>, the system can copy one to another without having to know anything but the size and alignment requirements of that type. If it were possible for t1, t2, or the type of any field within either of those types, to implement a copy constructor, code which copied one struct instance to another would have to be much more complicated.
That's not to say that such an ability offer some significant benefits--it's possible that, were a new framework being designed, the benefits of custom value assignment operators and default constructors would exceed the costs. The costs of implementation, however, would be substantial in a new framework, and likely insurmountable for an existing one.

This code is working for me:
public class Class1
{
...
public static implicit operator Class1(Class2 value)
{
Class1 result = new Class1();
result.property = value.prop;
return result;
}
}

Type of Overriding Assignment
There are two type to Override Assignment:
When you feel that user may miss something, and you want force user to use 'casting'
like float to integer, when you loss the floating value
int a = (int)5.4f;
When you want user to do that without even notice that s/he changing the object type
float f = 5;
How to Override Assignment
For 1, use of explicit keyword:
public static explicit override ToType(FromType from){
ToType to = new ToType();
to.FillFrom(from);
return to;
}
For 2, use of implicit keyword:
public static implicit override ToType(FromType from){
ToType to = new ToType();
to.FillFrom(from);
return to;
}
Update:
Note: that this implementation can take place in either the FromType or ToType class, depending on your need, there's no restriction, one of your class can hold all the conversions, and the other implements no code for this.

C# property and ref parameter, why no sugar?

I just ran across this error message while working in C#
A property or indexer may not be passed as an out or ref parameter
I known what caused this and did the quick solution of creating a local variable of the correct type, calling the function with it as the out/ref parameter and then assigning it back to the property:
RefFn(ref obj.prop);
turns into
{
var t = obj.prop;
RefFn(ref t);
obj.prop = t;
}
Clearly this would fail if the property doesn't support get and set in the current context.
Why doesn't C# just do that for me?
The only cases where I can think of where this might cause problems are:
threading
exceptions
For threading that transformation affects when the writes happen (after the function call vs. in the function call), but I rather suspect any code that counts on that would get little sympathy when it breaks.
For exceptions, the concern would be; what happens if the function assigns to one of several ref parameters than throws? Any trivial solution would result in all or none of the parameters being assigned to when some should be and some should not be. Again I don't think this would be supported use of the language.
Note: I understand the mechanics of why this error messages is generated. What I'm looking for is the rationale for why C# doesn't automatically implement the trivial workaround.

Because you're passing the result of the indexer, which is really the result of a method call. There's no guarantee that the indexer property also has a setter, and passing it by ref would lead to a false security on the developer's part when he thinks that his property is going to be set without the setter being called.
On a more technical level, ref and out pass the memory address of the object passed into them, and to set a property, you have to call the setter, so there's no guarantee that the property would actually be changed especially when the property type is immutable. ref and out don't just set the value upon return of the method, they pass the actual memory reference to the object itself.

Properties are nothing more than syntactic sugar over the Java style getX/setX methods. It doesn't make much sense for 'ref' on a method. In your instance it would make sense because your properties are merely stubbing out fields. Properties don't have to just be stubs, hence the framework cannot allow 'ref' on Properties.
EDIT: Well, the simple answer is that the mere fact that a Property getter or setter could include far more than just a field read/write makes it undesirable, not to mention possibly unexpected, to allow the sort of sugar you are proposing. This isn't to say I haven't been in need of this functionality before, just that I understand why they wouldn't want to provide it.

Just for info, C# 4.0 will have something like this sugar, but only when calling interop methods - partly due to the sheer propensity of ref in this scenario. I haven't tested it much (in the CTP); we'll have to see how it pans out...

You can use fields with ref/out, but not properties. The reason is that properties are really just a syntax short cut for special methods. The compiler actually translates get / set properties to corresponding get_X and set_X methods as the CLR has no immediate support for properties.

It wouldn't be thread-safe; if two threads simultaneously create their own copies of the property value and pass them to functions as ref parameters, only one of them ends up back in the property.
class Program
{
static int PropertyX { get; set; }
static void Main()
{
PropertyX = 0;
// Sugared from:
// WaitCallback w = (o) => WaitAndIncrement(500, ref PropertyX);
WaitCallback w = (o) => {
int x1 = PropertyX;
WaitAndIncrement(500, ref x1);
PropertyX = x1;
};
// end sugar
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(w);
// Sugared from:
// WaitAndIncrement(1000, ref PropertyX);
int x2 = PropertyX;
WaitAndIncrement(1000, ref x2);
PropertyX = x2;
// end sugar
Console.WriteLine(PropertyX);
}
static void WaitAndIncrement(int wait, ref int i)
{
Thread.Sleep(wait);
i++;
}
}
PropertyX ends up as 1, whereas a field or local variable would be 2.
That code sample also highlights the difficulties introduced by things like anonymous methods when asking the compiler to do sugary stuff.

The reason for this is that C# does not support "parameterful" properties that accept parameters passed by reference. It is interesting to note that the CLR does support this functionalty but C# does not.

When you pass ref/out prepended it means that you are passing a reference type which is stored in the heap.
Properties are wrapper methods, not variables.

If you're asking why the compiler doesn't substitute the field returned by the property's getter, it's because the getter can return a const or readonly or literal or something else that shouldn't be re-initialized or overwritten.

This site appears to have a work around for you. I have not tested it though, so I can't guarantee it will work. The example appears to use reflection in order to gain access to the get and set functions of the property. This is probably not a recommended approach, but it might accomplish what you're asking for.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/Passing_Properties_byref.aspx