Question

I am using an int array to hold a long list of integers. For each element of this array I want to check if it is 1, if so do stuff relevant to 1 only, else if it is a 2, do other stuff relevant to 2, and so forth for each value stored in the array. I came up with the code below but it isn’t working as expected, is there something I am missing? What is happening is that only the first value of the array is being considered.

int[] variable1 = MyClass1.ArrayWorkings();
foreach (int i in variable1)
{ 
    if (variable1[i] == 1)
    {
        // arbitrary stuff
    }
    else if (variable1[i] ==2)
    {
        //arbitrary stuff
    }
}

Answer 1

You’re trying to do something that doesn’t make sense. To see how it works, take a simple example, an array with values: 9, 4, 1.

If you try to run your code on this sample array, you’ll get an error:

foreach (int i in variable1)
{ 
    if (variable1[i] == 1)   // the item i is 9.  
                             // But variable[i] means, get the value at position #9 in the array
                             // Since there are only 3 items in the array, you get an Out Of Range Exception
    {
        // arbitrary stuff
    }
{

Instead, this is what you need:

foreach (int i in variable1)  // i will be 9, then 4, then 1)
{ 
    if (i == 1)   
    {
        // arbitrary stuff
    }
    // ... etc
}

The alternative is to use a for loop, which would give you the indices 0, 1, and 2, like this:

for (int i=0 ; i<=variable1.Length ; i++)   // i will be 0, 1, 2
                                            // variable[i] will be 9, 4, 1
{
    if (variable1[i] == 1) 
    { 
        // stuff
    }

    // ... etc
}