Question

I created an object array with different types of elements in them:

public static int a;
public static string b;
public static ushort c;

object[] myobj = new obj[]{ a, b, c};

If I want to create an array that contains elements of arrays of this myobj type, how would I do it?

I mean something like this:

myobj[] myarray = new myobj[];  <= but to do this, myobj should be a type. 

Not sure how to work it out.

Thanks everyone.

Answer 1

How about we use a Dictionary to store any types you need?

So, while you will not exactly have myType.a, you can have myType.Values["a"], which is close enough, makes use of standard C# constructs, and gives you lots of flexibility/maintainability

public class MyType
{
    public MyType()
    {
        this.Values = new Dictionary<object, object>();
    }

    public Dictionary<object, object> Values
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
}

And sample usage:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public static class Program
{
    [STAThread]
    private static void Main()
    {
        var myTypes = new MyType[3];

        myTypes[0] = new MyType();
        myTypes[1] = new MyType();
        myTypes[2] = new MyType();

        for (var current = 0; current < myTypes.Length; ++current)
        {
            // here you customize what goes where
            myTypes[current].Values.Add("a", current);
            myTypes[current].Values.Add("b", "myBvalue");
            myTypes[current].Values.Add("c", (ushort)current);
        }

        foreach (var current in myTypes)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(
               string.Format("A={0}, B={1}, C={2}", 
                              current.Values["a"], 
                              current.Values["b"],
                              current.Values["c"]));
        }

 }

Plus, if you want, you can easily add an indexer property to your class, so you can access elements with the syntax myType["a"]. Notice that you should add error checking when adding or retrieving values.

public object this[object index]
{
    get
    {
        return this.Values[index];
    }

    set
    {                    
        this.Values[index] = value;
    }
}

And here’s a sample using indexer. Increment the entries by ‘1’ so we see a difference in the ouptut:

for (var current = 0; current < myTypes.Length; ++current)
{
    myTypes[current]["a"] = current + 1;
    myTypes[current]["b"] = "myBvalue2";
    myTypes[current]["c"] = (ushort)(current + 1);
}

foreach (var current in myTypes)
{
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("A={0}, B={1}, C={2}", 
                                    current["a"], 
                                    current["b"], 
                                    current["c"]));
}