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Can I really and truly trust .NET to initialize fields (like ints, structs and the like)? And what if I still want to initialize those fields - what could be the repercussions?
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The variable's value is assigned but never used, making it a dead store. This variable's initial value is not used. After initialization, the variable is either assigned another value or goes out of scope.
A field initializer allows you to initialize a field inline, instead of inside of a constructor. For example, instead of doing: class MyClass() { int a; int b; public MyClass() { a = 5; b = 3; } }
For more information, see Constants. A field can be declared required. A required field must be initialized by the constructor, or by an object initializers when an object is created.
The C# specification states on p.305 (17.4.4)
The initial value of a field, whether it be a static field or an instance field, is the default value (§12.2) of the field’s type. It is not possible to observe the value of a field before this default initialization has occurred, and a field is thus never “uninitialized”.
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Yes, you can really trust .NET to initialize fields to their default values. There are basically no repercussions for doing it explicitly. (One small caveat here: if you initialize static fields explicitly, then anyone running the type initializer a second time via reflection will end up re-initializing those fields. This is a real corner case though!)
Do whatever promotes the most readability in your particular codebase.
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