Reconciling properties of structs and DateTime

Question

I have been looking through the DateTime structure and I am slightly confused.

My understanding with structs is that you cannot assign \'default values\' of fields. If t

Answer 1

Jon Skeet is right it's all about the difference between fields and other members. One could really make a "date time" like this:

struct MyDateTime
{
  // This is the only instance field of my struct
  // Ticks gives the number of small time units since January 1, 0001, so if Ticks is 0UL, the date will be just that
  readonly ulong Ticks;

  // here goes a lot of instance constructors,
  // get-only instance properties to show (components of) the DateTime in a nice way,
  // static helper methods,
  // and lots of other stuff, but no more instance fields
  ...
}

So in reality, MyDateTime is just a wrapped ulong with an interpretation, and a lot of nice ways to show and manipulate that ulong.