Should the base Keyword be used?

Question

When calling methods on a base class from a derived class, should the 'base' keyword be used? It seems using the base keyword would increase code readability but for me so far, when I exclude it, there is no affect on code compilation and execution.

Answer 1

The base keyword is important when overriding methods:

override void Foo()
{
  base.Foo();
  // other stuff
}

I never use it for anything else.

Answer 2

You should not use base unless you specifically mean "Even if there is a method in this class that overrides the base implementation, I want to call the base implementation and ignore the one on this class".

Using base bypasses the virtual dispatch mechanism that is so important in polymorphism by causing a call instruction to be emitted rather than callvirt.

So saying base.Foo() is very, very different in semantics to saying this.Foo(). And you almost always want the latter.