What for should I mark private variables as privat

Question

As far as I know, in C# all fields are private for default, if not marked otherwise.

class Foo
{
  private string bar;
}

class Foo
{
  string bar;
}

I guess these two declarations are equal.

So my question is: what for should I mark private variables as private if they already are private?

Answer 1

Up to you. Do what's best for readability or makes sense in your case. I mark them as private just to make it clear though.

Answer 2

I think for readability it is always best to be explicit.

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Answer 3

Now; fields should pretty-much always be private anyway, so it is an edge case whether you should bother.

For the wider subject, I remember a comment by Eric Lippert - essentially saying that given a method / class / whatever:

void Foo() {}
class Bar {}

Then it isn't clear whether they are private/internal deliberately, or whether the developer has thought about it, and decided that they should be private/internal/whatever. So his suggestion was: tell the reader that you are doing things deliberately instead of by accident - make it explicit.

Answer 4

Yes they are equal but I like to mark private variables as private, I think it improves reading.

also I use this common notation for private members, it's very useful :

private string _bar;