Question

I am currently learning to work with abstract classes and virtual. I created a simple form that generates the names of animals, color, and the sound they make. Everything seems to work right except for color display property. The results are being displayed in a multiline textBox. Is there a way to display the result with only the color name instead of this format Color [DarkGray]?

Result when button clicked:

Betty is a Color [DarkGray] horse with four legs and runs very fast that goes neigh! neigh!!

The desired result:

Betty is a Dark Gray horse with four legs and runs very fast that goes neigh! neigh!!

CODE

namespace farm
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        public abstract class Animal
        {
            protected string the_name;
            protected string the_type;
            protected Color the_color;
            protected string features;

            public virtual string speaks()
            {
                return "";
            }

            public override string ToString()
            {
                string s = the_name + " is a " + the_color + " " + the_type + " with " + features + " that goes " + speaks();
                return s;
            }
        }

public class Horse : Animal
        {
            public Horse(string new_name, Color new_color)
            {
                the_name = new_name;
                the_color = new_color;
                the_type = "horse";
                features = "four legs and runs very fast";

            }

            public override string speaks()
            {
                return "neigh! neigh!!";
            }

        }

 private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {

            Horse horse1 = new Horse("Topaz", Color.DarkGray);
            textBox1.AppendText(horse1.ToString());
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Yes, in your ToString method, use:

the_color.Name

Or better still, if you want to have a string with whitespace in where the string contains upper case characters, e.g. DarkGray => Dark Gray, you could define an extension like this

public static class ColorExtensions
{
    public static string GetColorString(this Color color)
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        foreach(char c in color.Name.ToCharArray())
        {
            if (char.IsUpper(c))
                sb.Append(' ');

            sb.Append(c);
        }

        return sb.ToString();
    }
}

and call it like this

the_color.GetColorString()