Question

Suppose I have an array of strings like :

myArray["hello", "my", "name", "is", "marco"]

to access to this variable, I have to put an integer as index. So if I wanto to extract the third element I just do :

myArray[2]

Now, I’d like to use label instead of integer.
So for example somethings like :

myArray["canada"]="hello";
myArray["america"]="my";
myArray["brazil"]="name";
myArray["gosaldo"]="is";
myArray["italy"]="marco";

How can I do this on C#? Is it possible? Thanks

Answer 1

That’s called an associative array, and C# doesn’t support them directly. However, you can achieve exactly the same the effect with a Dictionary<TKey, TValue>. You can add values with the Add method (which will throw an exception if you try to add an already existing key), or with the indexer directly, as below (this will overwrite the existing value if you use the same key twice).

Dictionary<string, string> dict = new Dictionary<string, string>();

dict["canada"] = "hello";
dict["america"] = "my";
dict["brazil"] = "name";
dict["gosaldo"] = "is";
dict["italy"] = "marco";