Question

I was wondering, and i’m not really sure, but help me out here.

If you have a List items, and there’s one object you need to change a property of it.
Say myClass has a string property “status”. I’m searching my list with a for-loop and i get my object so i do

myClass item = items[i];

if i want to change the “status” property, i do this for example :

item.Status = "new status";

My question/issue is this: is “item” still linked to the list item, so that if i execute the line above, it will be changed in the list as well without having to set this :

items[i] = item;

Hope this is clear.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The code item.Status = "new status"; will change the list item

items[i] points to a myClass object.

When you say myClass item = items[i];, it is referenced by both item and items[i].

so when you alter one of the properties like this item.Status = "new status"; you’re actually making changes to your myClass object which now has two names item and items[i].

You can also use item[i].Status = "new status";. Both do the same job.

Setting items[i] = item; has no effect, since both reference the same object already.