Question

I am aware that I can’t dynamically refer to a variable (eg. ‘var & var.Close()’).
Can I somehow have a variable that can point to another variable by name?

My current code is (where func() requires an array):

Dim playerNum As String = “P1”
Select Case playerNum
  Case “P1”
    Func(P1(x, xx))
  Case “P2”
    Func(P2(x, xx))
  .........
End Select

Can something along these lines be done?

Dim playerNum As varNameRef = P1(,)
Func(playerNum(x, xx))

Really anything to stop so much repetition would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.

Answer 1

What you need is a reference type (class), instead of a value type (structure). For instance, if you created a class that stored your array as a property, like this:

Public Class PlayerData
    Public Data(10, 30) As Object
End Class

This also gives you the advantage of easily expanding the data that you store about each player. Then, you could reference the same PlayerData object with multiple variables:

Dim player1 As New PlayerData()
Dim player2 As New PlayerData()
Dim player As PlayerData = Nothing
Select Case playerNum
    Case “P1”
        player = player1
    Case “P2”
        player = player2
End Select
Func(player.Data(x, xx))

However, it would be even better yet to store them in a dictionary as key value pairs, such as:

Dim players As New Dictionary(Of String, PlayerData)()
players("P1") = New PlayerData()
players("P2") = New PlayerData()

Then, you could access you players like this:

Func(players(playerNum).Data(x, xx))