Why do mutations on readonly structs not break?

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In C#, if you have a struct like so:

struct Counter
{
    private int _count;

    public int Value
    {
        get { return _count; }
    }

    public int Increment()
    {
        return ++_count;
    }
}

And you have a program like so:

static readonly Counter counter = new Counter();

static void Main()
{
    // print the new value from the increment function
    Console.WriteLine(counter.Increment());
    // print off the value stored in the item
    Console.WriteLine(counter.Value);
}

The output of the program will be:

1
0

This seems completely wrong. I would either expect the output to be two 1s (as it is if Counter is a class or if struct Counter : ICounter and counter is an ICounter) or be a compilation error. I realize that detecting this at compilation time is a rather difficult matter, but this behavior seems to violate logic.

Is there a reason for this behavior beyond implementation difficulty?

2 Answers
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