Question

This is embarrassing. I learned C# a long time ago and am just now attempting to understand this question about classes (since they are reference types, of course).

Here’s the question: If I create two new instances of a class called Person and named one instance P and the other Q (who cares why I’d call it Q) and set P.Name to "James" and then set Q.Name to "Suzie", would P.Name be set to "Suzie"? Or am I not understanding this correctly?

Thanks everyone

Thanks everyone for helping me with this. I assumed what was explained to me was the case. But the explanations in the tutorials I read weren’t clear and I haven’t had a computer in a few months so as to have tested it out myself.

P.s I chose the first right answer that was clear to me. But noticed several. Thanks again for everyone’s help.

Answer 1

The short answer is NO, changing Q.Name will no affect P.Name. As in

 var p = new Person();
 var q = new Person();
 p.Name = "James";
 q.Name = "Suzie";

However, if q points to the p instance, then changing q would also change p. As in:

 var p = new Person();
 var q = p;
 p.Name = "James";
 q.Name = "Suzie";

Both q and q Name are now “Suzie”.

With data initialisers you can write the first example as:

var p = new Person { Name = "James" };
var q = new Person { Name = "Suzie" };

which I think is much easier to read.