C# 6.0 – nameof Expressions

Yes, this feature should’ve introduced ages ago

Didactic Code

This post covers a pre-release C# 6.0 feature. It’s possible that the final implementation may differ from what’s described here.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve needed to pass along the name of something be it a property, method, or type. Historically we’ve relied on hard-coded strings to convey this information but as we’re all too well aware, relying on strings in such a manner is just asking for future problems. For a prime example, we need look no further than our old friend INotifyPropertyChanged.

Consider the following Circle class which typifies the basic INotifyPropertyChanged implementation pattern:

Although this class is pretty boilerplate, it highlights the problem well. First, we’ve violated the DRY principle by encoding a member name in a string. Next, we’ve introduced fragility by relying on the string always reflecting the property name exactly; should the property name ever change we need to…

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