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MSIL Trivia - 3 (Constructors in .NET)

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Background: Let's write the following code in C# (cons.cs)

using C = System.Console;
public class X
{
    int i, j;
    public X()
    {
    }
    public X(int i)
    {
        this.i = i;
    }
    public X(int i, int j)
    {
        this.i = i;
        this.j = j;
    }
    public void PrintValues()
    {
        C.WriteLine("i = {0}, j = {1}", this.i, this.j);
    }
}
public class Constructor_Test
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        C.WriteLine("Create an object of class X");
        X objX1 = new X(100);
        C.WriteLine("We created an object with i = 100. Let's print it now...");
        objX1.PrintValues();
        C.WriteLine("Hmm... let's create another object with i = 5 and j = 10 and print the values");
        X objX2 = new X(5, 10);
        objX2.PrintValues();
        C.WriteLine("Trying to create a new object with default constructor and print the values");
        X objX3 = new X();
        objX3.PrintValues();
    }
}

Compile it using csc, and execute it. Everything works fine. Now comment out...

    public X()
    {
    }

Try compiling again, and you will see the following...

I:\Code>csc cons.cs
Microsoft (R) Visual C# 2005 Compiler version 8.00.50727.42
for Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 2005 Framework version 2.0.50727
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2001-2005. All rights reserved.
cons.cs(34,13): error CS1501: No overload for method 'X' takes '0' arguments
cons.cs(8,9): (Location of symbol related to previous error)
cons.cs(12,9): (Location of symbol related to previous error)

That implies that you can't use

X objX3 = new X(); if you don't have a default constructor. Right?

Question> But then, how does this one work??

using C = System.Console;
public class X
{
    int i, j;
    public void PrintValues()
    {
        C.WriteLine("i = {0}, j = {1}", this.i, this.j);
    }
}
public class Constructor_Test
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        X objX3 = new X();
        objX3.PrintValues();
    }
}

Answer> Notice how the default constructor is created for you, even if you don't have a constructor defined.

image

On the other hand, if you have the default contructor and the following commented out in the first code snippet...

            X objX3 = new X();
        objX3.PrintValues();

...your cs file should compile and you get something as follows...

image

Notice that, since you have a couple of constructors defined, CSC doesn't create an empty and default constructor for you and that's the reason why you were seeing the compile error message above.

Cheers,
Rahul

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