Question

my function has the following signature

function myfunction(ref object)

I use it as such

 Array arr = Array.CreateInstance(System.Type.GetType("System.String"), 2);
  arr.SetValue("1", 0);

  myfunction( ref arr);

And I am getting

“cannot convert from ‘ref System.Array’ to ‘ref object'”

I was under the impression that System.Array is object …so why am I getting this error? Is object different from Object?

Answer 1

Think of ‘ref object’ as “I take a reference to a variable that can store an Object”. Suppose that ‘myfunction’ tried to store an ‘int’ to the variable you passed? This would fail at runtime, which is undesirable.

On a side note, you can use typeof(string) in place of calling GetType(“System.String”). You can also just say:

Object arr = new string[2];

---

To access the array first, you can do this:

string[] arr = new string[2];
arr[0] = "1";
object arrObj = arr;
myfunction(ref arrObj);

I would double check that you’re using the method myfunction correctly; it’s a rather unusual parameter type for taking an initialized array.