When you declare an instance of a value type without initializing it, the compiler prevents you from referencing the uninitialized variable.
1 2 3 | int x;Console.WriteLine(x); // Compile-time error: [Use of unassigned local variable 'x'] |
If you declare and instantiate a reference type, the internal fields and properties are all initialized by setting all of the bits of the underlying memory for each item to 0. This equates to:
- Reference types = null
- Numeric types = 0
- Enum types = 0
- Char type =
- Boolean type = false
This means that value types declared inside the object are automatically initialized when the object is created.
For example, assume that we create a new Person object without calling a constructor that initializes any fields.
1 | Person p = new Person(); |
We can look at the new Person object in the debugger to see that all of its fields have been initialized.
