Question

I have the following code:

public Form1()
{
    InitializeComponent();


    string strRadio = Utils.ReadFile(strTemp + @"\rstations.txt");
    string[] aRadio = strRadio.Split(new string[] { "#" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);    
    for (int i = 0; i < aRadio.Length; i += 2)
    {
       listBox.Items.Add(aRadio[i]);
    }

}

private void listBox_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    int index = listBox.SelectedIndex;
    MessageBox.Show(aRadio[(index+1)]);
}

Now the error is The name 'aRadio' does not exist in the current context. Which comes from MessageBox.Show(aRadio[(index+1)]);. Do I need to declare the aRadio as public or something? If so, how would this be done?

Answer 1

You’re declaring aRadio as a local variable within your constructor. You need to declare it as an instance variable, and just assign it a value within your constructor:

// TODO: Give this a better name
private readonly string[] aRadio;

// TODO: Give your form a better name too
public Form1()
{
    InitializeComponent();

    // TODO: You might want to reconsider reading files in a GUI constructor, too
    // TODO: Use Path.Combine(strTemp, "rstations.txt" instead of concatenation
    string strRadio = Utils.ReadFile(strTemp + @"\rstations.txt");
    aRadio = strRadio.Split(new string[] { "#" },
                            StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

    for (int i = 0; i < aRadio.Length; i += 2)
    {
       listBox.Items.Add(aRadio[i]);
    }
}

I wouldn’t be surprised if you could do rather better than this approach though, by adding a custom object (or just a KeyValuePair<string, string>) to the list box and binding the display part through properties. That way you could get the selected item rather than the selected index… there’s no need to keep text/value pairs like this.