Question

What I’m trying to achieve is say i have an array, i want to be able to modify a specific array element throughout my code, by pointing at it.

for example in C++ i can do this

int main(){
 int arr [5]= {1,2,3,4,5};
 int *c = &arr[3];
 cout << arr[3] <<endl;
 *c = 0;
 cout << arr[3]<<endl;
}

I did some googling and there seems to be a way to do it through ‘unsafe’, but i don’t really want to go that route.

I guess i could create a variable to store the indexes, but I’m actually dealing with slightly more complexity (a list within a list. so having two index variables seems to add complexity to the code.)

C# has a databinding class, so what I’m currently doing is binding the array element to a textbox (that i have hidden) and modifying that textbox whenever i want to modify the specific array element, but that’s also not a good solution (since i have a textbox that’s not being used for its intended purpose – a bit misleading).

Answer 1

A C# example of how you would like the use to look would help. If I understand what you’re asking, a simple class like this might do it. What you’re asking for though, doesn’t seem like a very good idea. If you showed the larger scope in which you need this, someone might be able to point out a better design where you didn’t need this sort of functionality at all.

public class ListElement<T> {
    private IList<T> list;
    private int index;
    public ListElement(IList<T> list, int index) {
        this.list = list;
        this.index = index;
    }
    public T Value {
        get {
            return list[index];
        }
        set {
            list[index] = value;
        }
    }
}

a use of this would look like

int[] arr = new int[] {1,2,3,4,5};
ListElement<int> third = new ListElement<int>(arr, 2);
Console.WriteLine(third.Value);
third.Value = 0;
Console.WriteLine(third.Value);