Question

I’m wondering if the index of an array can be given a name in C# instead of the default index value. What I’m basically looking for is the C# equivalent of the following PHP code:

$array = array(
    "foo" => "some foo value",
    "bar" => "some bar value",
);

Cheers.

Answer 1

PHP blends the concept of arrays and the concept of dictionaries (aka hash tables, hash maps, associative arrays) into a single array type.

In .NET and most other programming environments, arrays are always indexed numerically. For named indices, use a dictionary instead:

var dict = new Dictionary<string, string> {
    { "foo", "some foo value" }, 
    { "bar", "some bar value" }
};

Unlike PHP’s associative arrays, dictionaries in .NET are not sorted. If you need a sorted dictionary (but you probably don’t), .NET provides a sorted dictionary type.