C# Copying instance variable to local variable in functions of same class

Question

I have been looking through some code on an open source project recently and found many occurrences of this kind of code:

class SomeClass
{
    private int SomeNumber = 42;

    public ReturnValue UseSomeNumber(...)
    {
        int someNumberCopy = this.SomeNumber;
        if (someNumberCopy > ...)
        {
            // ... do some work with someNumberCopy
        }
        else
        {
            // ... do something else with someNumberCopy
        }
    }
}

Is there any real benefit to making a copy of the instance variable?

Answer 1

Possibly this is part of multi-threaded program. Though this code is not thread-safe, it ensures that once copy variable is assigned, it is not changed by another threads, and all function code after this runs consistently.

Similar code with events becomes critical in multi-threaded environment:

MyEvent e = this.myEvent;

if ( e != null )
{
    e();
}

Here, without making a local copy, it is possible to get null-pointer exception, if event becomes null after testing for null, and before invoking.

Answer 2

No unless you don't want to change the value of SomeNumber and you intend on updating someNumberCopy. Like if you were going to loop the number of times and were going to decrement someNumberCopy down to zero to keep track of the count.

I suppose copying the variable like that could protect you from some outside function altering SomeNumber and changing it without your knowledge while performing an operation. I could potentially see this if the class was supposed to be used in a multi-threaded application. Maybe not he way I would go about it, but that could have been the author's intent.