Why does StyleCop recommend prefixing method or property calls with "this"?

Question

I have been trying to follow StyleCop's guidelines on a project, to see if the resulting code was better in the end. Most rules are reasonable or a matter of opinion on coding standard, but there is one rule which puzzles me, because I haven't seen anyone else recommend it, and because I don't see a clear benefit to it:

SA1101: The call to {method or property name} must begin with the 'this.' prefix to indicate that the item is a member of the class.

On the downside, the code is clearly more verbose that way, so what are the benefits of following that rule? Does anyone here follow that rule?

Answer 1

I don't really follow this guidance unless I'm in the scenarios you need it:

• there is an actual ambiguity - mainly this impacts either constructors (this.name = name;) or things like Equals (return this.id == other.id;)
• you want to pass a reference to the current instance
• you want to call an extension method on the current instance

Other than that I consider this clutter. So I turn the rule off.

Answer 2

It can make code clearer at a glance. When you use this, it's easier to:

• Tell static and instance members apart. (And distinguish instance methods from delegates.)
• Distinguish instance members from local variables and parameters (without using a naming convention).