Parameters and Arguments

These days I’m reading “C# in Depth, Second Edition” written by a very famous C# MVP Jon Skeet. In his book Jon cleared the difference between Parameters and Arguments which I thought to share, with his permission. A lot of software developers really use these words interchangeably when discussing about programming with each other and sometimes we never realized that.

A parameter is the variable which is part of the method or indexer declaration whereas an argument is an expression used when calling the method or indexer. For example:

private void M1(int number)
{
// some code
}

//somewhere else in the code 
int value = 10;
M1(value);

In the code snippet above number is the parameter whereas as value is the argument. Hope you will now use these words properly, if you were interchanging them previously like me :)