>>The age old questions. Should I use a property or a method? Is one faster than the other?
>
>Einar,
>I just looked this up in book Framework Design Guidelines (ISBN-10:0-321-24675-6). This is focused more on resuable frameworks instead of general code, but I think a lot of the ideas still apply:
>
>Use a property, rather than a method, if the value of the property is stored in the process memory and the property would just provide access to the value. (I think we can all agree on this)
>
>Use a method, rather than a property, in the following situations:
>-The operation is orders of magnitude slower than a field access would be.
>-The operation is a conversion, such as Object.ToString method. (Note that DateTime.Now property does not adhere to this guideline, and should)
>-The operation returns a different result each time it is called, even if the parameters don't change (like Guid.NewGuid).
>-The operation has a significant and observable side effect.
>-The operation returns a copy of an internal state.
>-The operation returns an array.

Thanks for the link Mike. It looks like a good book. I can't seem to find the 2nd edition though.