unbounded array in visual c#? - c#

By accident, it appears I am creating an unbounded array, which I didn't think was possible in c#. I am not getting any errors, and the code works, but I see no reference to the array declaration I used in online documentation. I tried using this method in other situations and I get an error every time. Why does this work?
Array arrLines;
arrLines = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(strTargetFilePath2);
foreach (string strLine2 in arrLines)
{
eventLog1.WriteEntry(strLine2);
}

Array arrLines; does not actually create an array. It just sets up a variable that you can assign an array to.
You don't have to set up a length when you declare arrLines because it is a reference type, which means that it holds an address to the hypothetical array content instead of the array content itself.
System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(strTargetFilePath2);
is what creates the array, and yes, that array does have a specific length.

Related

Have a method directly edit a variable passed as a parameter?

I have a quick question (this is in C#). Let's say I have an array of numbers:
int[] count = new int[4] {0, 4, 3, 2};
I have a method that does some stuff:
public void Invert(int[] arrayVar)
{
for (int i = 0; i < arrayVar.Count; i++)
{
//arrayVar[i] = stuff
}
}
If I call the method by doing this:
Invert(count);
Is there a way to have the method directly edit the count array instead of just duplicating it and editing the duplicate? I can't have a global variable for multithreading reasons and I can't return the end result because I have similar methods that have to return very specific things. Is this possible? Thanks!
Is there a way to have the method directly edit the count array instead of just duplicating it and editing the duplicate?
Yes. Do exactly what you are doing. Your program already does exactly what you are asking for.
Arrays are passed by reference in C#. count and arrayVar refer to the same array. When you pass an array to a method, that method does not get a copy of the array. It gets a copy of a reference to the array.
Changes that you make to arrayVar inside Invert will also be made to count inside the caller because those two variables both contain a reference to the same array.
Do not confuse this with the ref feature of C#. Ref makes two variables act as though they are the same variable. Here you have two different variables that both refer to the same array. Make sure that the distinction is clear in your mind.
A number of answers confusingly suggest that you use a list instead of an array. Lists are also reference types; they have the same semantics as arrays when passed to a method. That is, the passed-in value is a reference. The reason to use a list instead of an array is because lists are more flexible and powerful than arrays. Arrays are fixed in size; an array with ten elements always has ten elements. A list can have new elements added or old elements removed.

C# Clear Array but not fill with 0 alternative of List.Clear (get size back to 0)

Is it possible to fully remove Array in C# but not to fill it with 0's:
for(int i=0;i<a.Length;i++)
{
a[i]=0;
}
or Array.Clear(a,0,a.Length);
But to clear it in a way that List.Clear() does so that it's size will be 0 again like before filling.
I tried
a=new int[15]; but prevous values where still there. Thanks!
Arrays in C# are fixed-length; you cannot change the size of an array. You can allocate an array of a different size and copy the elements in order to simulate resizing (this is exactly what List<T> does internally), but you cannot "clear an array" in the sense that you reduce it to zero elements.
I tried a=new int[15]; but prevous values where still there.
The previous values cannot possibly still be there, because this allocates a new int array of 15 elements, where all elements are zero.
Note that this does not alter the array that a referenced; rather, it creates a new array and stores a reference to it in a. So if you initialized a from another array variable, they would have referred to the same array, but after assigning a new array to a the other variable would continue to point to the old array. Perhaps this is where the "previous values" are coming from.
var a = new int[] { 1, 2, 3 };
var b = a;
// a and b now reference the same array.
a = new int[] { 4, 5, 6 };
// a is now {4,5,6} but b remains {1,2,3}
As others have said, it depends on the type semantics that you're putting into the array.
Value types (such as int, bool, and float) are ... well, values. They represent a quantity, something tangible, a state. Thus, they are required to be known at compile time and have a default value.
By contrast, reference types (basically every class) don't actually hold any values themselves, but "group" data together by means of reference. Reference types will either point to other reference types, or eventually to a value type (which holds actual data).
This distinction is important to your question. List<T> is a dynamically sized collection that can grow or shrink without creating a new object because of how it is implemented. Each element in the list points to the next element, thus it's size cannot be known ahead of time.
Arrays are a fixed-size collection that are declared to be a specific size. The type of array determines how much memory is reserved by the system. For example a byte[] of 100 elements will consume less memory than an Int64[] array of 100 elements. Thus, the system needs to know ahead of time how many bytes to reserve in total, which means it needs a default value to "fall back" on to satisfy compile-time checking. Where T[] is a reference type/class, this is null. For value types, this is usually 0 (or default(T)).
If you wanted to remove all the values of an array, similar to how List.Clear() works, you can do int[] a = new int[0];, but note that you are creating an entirely new array and reallocating the memory for them (hence the keyword new). Other objects will need to reference this new array. By design, you can't simply resize an array. A list is a mutable collection and supports changing the number of elements. You could also try int[] a = null, but this sets it to no object at all, which is again, something different.
It depends whether the array's elements are Value type or Reference type.
In your case it is value type so you'll have to have some value in it. You can not assign null to it.
Because value type objects have some default values.

Why should each element in array be allocated again in c#

Following is the code I wrote
Calc[] calculators = new Calc[10];
calculators[0].AddToSum(10); (the corresponding classes and methods are written).
But I got "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" exception.Then with some research I got the exception removed by doing following.
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
calculators[i] = new Calc();
}
Can somebody explain why we need to allocate memory again unlike in c/c++.
This is how I did it in c++:
Calculator *calc=new Calculator[10]//I know I need to check for std::bad_alloc exception
calculators[0].AddToSum(10);
delete[] calc;
In C#, there are reference types, and there are value types. Classes are reference types. When you create a variable of a reference type, you are creating a reference, not an object. The default state of a reference is null. If you want it to refer to an object, you have to explicitly initialize it with new, or assign if from another initialized reference.
C++ does not have this distinction. Every type is a value type (though you can also create references to any type). When you create a variable of a value type, you are creating an object.
in new Calc[10] you are allocating and sizing the array. in new Calc() you are creating the actual Calc objects
But you would get that same error with this statement
Calc calc;
calc.AddToSum(10);
Object is null until you you assign a value.
Calc[] calculators = new Calc[10]; does not allocate.
Based on the answer from Benjamin (+1) it works if Calc is a reference type.
Can you just make Calc a struct?
I don't think you allocate the memory again, but you still need to instantiate some value for calculators[0].
In your first code-segment, your are trying to call .AddToSum on a value that is Null.
Ps: You could do the following instead, to initialize each Calc from the start:
Calc[] calculators = new Calc[10]{
new Calc(),
new Calc(),
...,
// Repeat 10 times to match array length
};
Update: In response to the comments below; Ok, try this then:
calc[] calculators = Enumerable.Repeat(new Calc(), 127).ToArray<Calc>();
When you create an array of objects in c++ you allocate memory for all the fields of each object. So if your objects have two integer fields and you make an array of size two, enough memory is allocated to hold four integers.
On the other hand in c# when you make an array of objects you are creating and array of references (pointers to objects). So you cannot store an instance unless you allocate memory for each reference (by using new).
The same thing in c++ would be making an array of pointers, and then you'll have to instantiate each element of your array.
Your C++ code is also wrong.
In C++ you've allocated an array with space for 10 Calculator objects.
When you do the operation, it's reading from that (uninitialized) memory, grabbing a value, and adding to it, then writing that back out.
But you've got an uninitialized object to start from.
It likely works in C++ because you have an object (Calculator) that doesn't require the constructor to be called. If it had any initialization that required the constructor to be called, it wouldn't work. If you were to use a debugger and put a breakpoint in Calculator constructor, you'll see it's never called.
Anyway, to directly answer the question, this is the way C# works. Allocating an array creates space for the array, but all objects within the array (assuming object types) are null until themselves allocated.
Think of it this way: I create an array to hold 10 objects of Class X. But X has a constructor that takes a string, and I want to call it with a different string for each of those objects. How would one do so without explicitly creating each of those 10 objects and passing the right string to each constructor?

How are strings stored in an object array?

object[] objs = new object[]{"one","two","three"};
Are the strings stored in the array as references to the string objects
[#] - one
[#] - two
[#] - three
or are the string objects stored in the array elements?
[one][two][three]
Thanks.
Edit: Sorry, my fancy diagram failed miserably.
String objects can never be stored directly in an array, or as any other variable. It's always references, even in a simple case such as:
string x = "foo";
Here the value of x is a reference, not an object. No expression value is ever an object - it's always either a reference, a value type value, or a pointer.
Jon Skeet describes the actual implementation very well, but let's consider why it would be nonsensical for the CLR to store strings directly in an array.
The first reason is that storing strings directly in the array would harm performance. If strings were stored directly in an array, then to get to the element 1000 of the array the CLR would have to walk through the bytes of all the strings in the array until it reached element 1000, checking all the while for string boundaries. Since strings and any other reference types are stored in arrays as references, finding the right element of the array requires one multiplication, one addition, and following one pointer (the notion of a pointer here is at the implementation level, not the programmer-visible level). This produces much better performance.
The second reason that strings cannot reasonably be stored directly in an array is that C# arrays of reference type are covariant. Let's say that strings were stored directly in the array generated with
string[] strings = new string[] {"one", "two", "three"};
Then, you cast this to an object array, which is legal
object[] objs = (object[])strings;
How is the compiler supposed to generate code that takes this possibility into account? A method that takes an object array as a parameter can have a string array passed to it, so the CLR needs to know whether to index into the array as an object array, or a string array, or some other type of array. Somehow, at runtime every array would have to be marked with the type declaration of the array, and every array access would have to check the type declaration and then traverse the array differently depending on the type of the array. It's far simpler to stick with references, which allow a single implementation of array accesses and improve performance to boot.
They're stored internally as references. A copy of the string is stored, and anywhere that string is used, there's a reference to the same stored string. (this is one of many reasons that strings are immutable; otherwise, modifying one instance of a string would modify everywhere it appeared)
all the primitive types are stored directly into a array but all other object or reference types are stored as memory references. This is true for all Objects not limited to Strings.

Passing an array by reference in C# and managed C++

here is the situation: I want to call a method from a C++ module, and pass an array to it:
x.Method(array, ...)
x is a C# object. I would suppose that I could change the array and fill it with my own data - but it seems not be the case (?)
How should I pass the array by reference and change its content in the method?
Thank you in advance,
cheers.
Yes, if you want to alter the array beyond just altering its elements (i.e. adding or removing elements) then you have to pass it by reference. The C# declaration would be:
public void Method(ref Mumble[] arg)
Which isn't great syntax. The garbage collector makes it easy to return an array as the function return value:
public Mumble[] Method(Mumble[] input)
But consider a List<Mumble> instead.
You don't need to pass the array by reference. Array is a reference type, so if you pass the array to the method, you're actually passing a reference to it. The method can change the content of the array pointed by the reference, but cannot change the reference itself (i.e. it can't make it point to a different array). If you were passing the array by reference, the method would be able to change the reference to the array, but that's probably not what you're looking for if you just want to fill an existing array.
I suggest you have a look at this article for more details

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