5.2. Understanding Constructors

Given that objects have state (represented by the values of an object's member variables), a programmer will typically want to assign relevant values to the object's field data before use. Currently, the Car class demands that the petName and currSpeed fields be assigned on a field-by-field basis. For the current example, this is not too problematic, given that we have only two public data points. However, it is not uncommon for a class to have dozens of fields to contend with. Clearly, it would be undesirable to author 20 initialization statements to set 20 points of data!

Thankfully, C# supports the use of constructors, which allow the state of an object to be established at the time of creation. A constructor is a special method of a class that is called indirectly when creating an object using the new keyword. However, unlike a "normal" method, constructors never have a return value (not even void) and are always named identically to the class they are constructing.