Entity Framework 4: C# !(ReferenceEquals()) vs !=

Posted by Eric J. on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Eric J.
Published on 2010-06-14T04:55:06Z Indexed on 2010/06/14 5:02 UTC
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Unless a class specifically overrides the behavior defined for Object, ReferenceEquals and == do the same thing... compare references.

In property setters, I have commonly used the pattern

private MyType myProperty;

public MyType MyProperty
{
    set
    {
        if (myProperty != value)
        {
            myProperty = value;
            // Do stuff like NotifyPropertyChanged
        }
    }
}

However, in code generated by Entity Framework, the if statement is replaced by

    if (!ReferenceEquals(myProperty, value))

Using ReferenceEquals is more explicit (as I guess not all C# programmers know that == does the same thing if not overridden).

Is there any difference that's escaping me between the two if-variants? Are they perhaps accounting for the possibility that POCO designers may have overridden ==?

In short, if I have not overridden ==, am I save using != instead of ReferencEquals()?

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