Question

I want to track a variable in my class that was created outside the scope. In C++ i’d just pass a pointer like this.

class Camera
{
    Player* player;
    Position pos;

    void setFollow(Player* pl) { pl = player; }
    void update() { pos = pl->getPos(); }
}

int Main()
{
    Camera* camera = new Camera();

    Player* player = new Player();

    camera->setFollow(player);
}

In C# I tried to pass by reference but it didnt seem to work.

public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game
{
    Camera cam = new Camera();
    Player player = new Player();

    cam.setFollow(ref player);  // <-- by reference
}

This is just a shortened version of my actual code.

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: Thanks to all for the information.

Answer 1

In C#, object (class) variables are implicitly pointers. So, if your class Camera has a field p of type Player, setting cam.p = player in your code would leave both references pointing to the same instance. There’s generally no need to use ref unless you’re passing value types (int, float, structs, etc) by reference.