What is this C# pattern for property initialization?

Question

I'll often have objects with properties that use the following pattern:

private decimal? _blah;
private decimal Blah
{
    get
    {
     if (_blah == null)
      _blah = InitBlah();
     return _blah.Value;
    }
}

Is there a name for this method?

Answer 1

Lazy loading, deferred initialization, etc.

Noet that InitBlah should (in this case) ideally return decimal, not decimal? to avoid the chance that it gets called lots of times because it is legitimately null.

Answer 2

This is called Lazy initialization

Answer 3

Lazy Initialization.

Answer 4

Lazy initialisation.

.NET 4, when it arrives, will have a Lazy<T> class built-in.

private readonly Lazy<decimal> _blah = new Lazy<decimal>(() => InitBlah());
public decimal Blah
{
    get { return _blah.Value; }
}

Answer 5

lazy initializer

Answer 6

Lazy load

Answer 7

I cant post comments yet. :(

It should be noted that you need to be aware of side effects in the OP code. That code could return inconsistent results for concurrent requests to the property.

Not sure if that happens with LazyLoad as well.

Its not bad, just worth noting if you use lazy initializers regularly.