Question

How do you determine the name of the variable and access it on runtime? For instance, if I had two strings:

string A = "This is A!";
string B = "This is B!";

And I type A into a textbox, then I want to display the contents of A using a message box.

MessageBox.Show(A); //Variable A is retrieved from the textbox input

Is this something that is doable with reflections? If not, how can I make this work?

Answer 1

I can’t understand, what exactly your going to get, but you can use expressions like this:

    static void PrintVariableName<T>(Expression<Func<T>> expression)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(((MemberExpression)expression.Body).Member.Name);
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var a = "Hello, world!";

        PrintVariableName(() => a);
    }

Can you describe concrete use case instead of conceptual question?