StackOverflow exception on private properties field

Question

Can someone please tell me why I get StackOverflowException for the code below ?

    private float _voltageRange
    {
        get { return _voltageRange + ((10F/100F)*_voltageRange); }
        set { _voltageRange = value; }
    }

How can I fix this problem? Isn't it taht compiler will make a backing field automatically?

What I want to achive is returning the _VoltageRange plus 10% of itself.

Answer 1

Both your getter and your setter call themselves recursively.

No, the compiler doesn't create a backing field for you automatically - not unless you use an automatically implemented property like this:

public float VoltageRange { get; set; }

Whenever you provide getter/setter bodies, you have to do it all yourself.

It sounds like you want:

private float _voltageRange;
private float VoltageRange
{
    get { return _voltageRange + ((10F/100F)*_voltageRange); }
    set { _voltageRange = value; }
}

Or more simply:

private float _voltageRange;
private float VoltageRange
{
    get { return (_voltageRange * 11) / 10; }
    set { _voltageRange = value; }
}

(Or just multiply by 1.1f, but that will have a little more possibility for data loss.)

Note that this is a pretty odd property - one where the value set isn't the same one that's retrieved. Normally this:

VoltageRange = VoltageRange;

would be a no-op. That's what most readers would expect.

It would probably be better to have two properties, like this:

private VoltageRange { get; set; }

private EffectiveVoltageRange { get { return VoltageRange * 1.1f; } }