Question

I’ve created a program which should calculate the surface area of an irregular shaped object, such as a lake.
I read in a file, which contained the values for the x and y values, and the depth.

I’m new to C#, and so I don’t fully understand everything yet, but I think my code should work, however, it doesn’t seem to be writing the value for the area onto the screen.

I know that Console.WriteLine(_surface); SHOULD work , but it I can’t seem to get it to do anything, and it’s probably in the wrong place!

Can someone please tell me where I’m going wrong?

My code is as follows.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using NUnit.Framework;


namespace ConsoleApplication1
{


    public class ValueXyz
    {
        public double X { get; set; }
        public double Y { get; set; }
        public int Z { get; set; }


    }


    public class SurfaceCalculator
    {

        private ValueXyz[] _valuesXyz;
        private double _surface;
        private readonly string _textWithValues;
       public SurfaceCalculator(string textWithValues)

        {
            _textWithValues = textWithValues;
            SetValuesToCalculate();
        }

        public double Surface
        {
            get { return _surface; }

        }


        public void CalculateSurface()
        {

            for (var i = 0; i < _valuesXyz.Length; i++)
            {
                if (_valuesXyz[i].Z == 0)
                    _surface = (_valuesXyz[i].X * _valuesXyz[i + 1].Y) - (_valuesXyz[i + 1].X * _valuesXyz[i].Y);

                Console.WriteLine(_surface);
            }


        }


        private void SetValuesToCalculate()
        {
            var valuesXyz = _textWithValues.Split(' ');


            _valuesXyz = valuesXyz.Select(item => new ValueXyz
            {
                X = Convert.ToDouble(item.Split(',')[0]),
                Y = Convert.ToDouble(item.Split(',')[1]),
                Z = Convert.ToInt32(item.Split(',')[2])


            }).ToArray();




        }



        public void TestSurfaceCalculatorGetsAValue()
        {

            var textWithValues = File.ReadAllLines(@"C:\Users\user\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\Lake_Take_Toooooo\Lake_Take_Toooooo\bin\Debug\Lake_Test.csv");
            var calculator = new SurfaceCalculator(_textWithValues);
            calculator.CalculateSurface();


            Assert.IsNotNull(calculator.Surface);

        }

        static void Main()
        {

            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

This is my first time using classes, so apologies if there’s an obvious answer.

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

You need to actually call the method inside the Main method, which is the program entry point. Like:

    static void Main()
    {
        CalculateSurface();
        Console.ReadKey();
    }

When you run your program, only the code inside the Main method is actually executed. If you do not call anything from there then no code is executed.