17.7.1 Field-like events

Within the program text of the class or struct that contains the declaration
of an event, certain events can be used
like fields. To be used in this way, an event must not be abstract or
extern, and must not explicitly include
event-accessor-declarations. Such an event can be used in any context that
permits a field. The field contains a
delegate (§22), which refers to the list of event handlers that have been
added to the event. If no event handlers
have been added, the field contains null.
[Example: In the example
public delegate void EventHandler(object sender, EventArgs e);
public class Button: Control
{
public event EventHandler Click;
protected void OnClick(EventArgs e) {
if (Click != null) Click(this, e);
}
public void Reset() {
Click = null;
}
}
Click is used as a field within the Button class. As the example
demonstrates, the field can be examined,
modified, and used in delegate invocation expressions. The OnClick method
in the Button class ?raises? the
Click event. The notion of raising an event is precisely equivalent to
invoking the delegate represented by the
event?thus, there are no special language constructs for raising events.
Note that the delegate invocation is
preceded by a check that ensures the delegate is non-null.
Outside the declaration of the Button class, the Click member can only be
used on the left-hand side of the +=
and ?= operators, as in
b.Click += new EventHandler(?);
which appends a delegate to the invocation list of the Click event, and
b.Click ?= new EventHandler(?);
which removes a delegate from the invocation list of the Click event. end
example]
When compiling a field-like event, the compiler automatically creates
storage to hold the delegate, and creates
accessors for the event that add or remove event handlers to the delegate
field. In order to be thread-safe, the
addition or removal operations are done while holding the lock (§15.12) on
the containing object for an instance
event, or the type object (§14.5.11) for a static event.
[Note: Thus, an instance event declaration of the form:
class X
{
public event D Ev;
}
could be compiled to something equivalent to:
class X
{
private D __Ev; // field to hold the delegate
Chapter 17 Classes
249
public event D Ev {
add {
lock(this) { __Ev = __Ev + value; }
}
remove {
lock(this) { __Ev = __Ev - value; }
}
}
}
Within the class X, references to Ev are compiled to reference the hidden
field __Ev instead. The name ?__Ev? is
arbitrary; the hidden field could have any name or no name at all.
Similarly, a static event declaration of the form:
class X
{
public static event D Ev;
}
could be compiled to something equivalent to:
class X
{
private static D __Ev; // field to hold the delegate
public static event D Ev {
add {
lock(typeof(X)) { __Ev = __Ev + value; }
}
remove {
lock(typeof(X)) { __Ev = __Ev - value; }
}
}
}
end note]