Question

Following is the code that I have been trying to deploy. As you can see I am deploying a blank interface to make a special datatype “mydatatype” for the list “mylist”.
And in the output I expect the assigned values to be displayed. But I am getting gibberish data. Can somebody explain?

public class list
{
    interface mydatatype
    {
    }
    public class mystring : mydatatype
    {
        public string mystrings{ get; set; }

    }
    public class myint : mydatatype
    {
        public int myints{ get; set; }
    }
    public class mydouble : mydatatype
    {
        public double mydoubles{ get; set; }
    }
    public static void Main() 
    {


        List<mydatatype> mylist = new List<mydatatype>
            {
                new mystring(),
                new myint(),
                new mydouble(),
            };
        mystring ab = new mystring();
        myint mi = new myint();
        mydouble mf = new mydouble();

        ab.mystrings = "asdf";
        mi.myints = 12;
        mf.mydoubles = 12.223;

        mylist.Add(ab);
        mylist.Add(mi);
        mylist.Add(mf);
        foreach (mydatatype element in mylist)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(element);
        }

        Console.ReadLine();
       } 

    }
}

Answer 1

“gibberish data” isn’t a real error description…

However, what is happening here is that Console.WriteLine(element); is the same as Console.WriteLine(element.ToString());. Because you haven’t overridden ToString in your classes, it will output the class names instead of the values. You would do that like this:

public class mystring : mydatatype
{
    public string mystrings{ get; set; }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return mystrings;
    }

}
public class myint : mydatatype
{
    public int myints{ get; set; }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return myints.ToString();
    }
}
public class mydouble : mydatatype
{
    public double mydoubles{ get; set; }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return mydoubles.ToString();
    }
}