I have had a request to discuss C# arrays but in general I don’t use arrays much anymore. I use generic Lists all the time mainly because the list is dynamic and can be resized easily. Arrays in comparrison are a static amount of memory and need to resized to handle additional items. The following is a simple console app (all it does is sort an group of ints, add another int, sort again and then print the list) that demonstrates what I am talking about – no linq yet I’ll add that to part 2 …
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace ArraysAndLists
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
//Why I don't really use arrays any more -
//we will sort an array add another item and sort again
int[] numberArray = { 4,1,3, 1, 3, 4, 5 };
Array.Sort(numberArray);
int[] numberArray2 = new int[numberArray.Length+1];
numberArray.CopyTo(numberArray2,0);
numberArray2[numberArray2.Length - 1] = 2;
Array.Sort(numberArray2);
Console.WriteLine("Array Sorted");
for (int i = 0; i < numberArray2.Length;i++ )
{
Console.WriteLine(numberArray2[i]);
}
//Why I love generic lists
//we will sort an array add another item and sort again
List<int> numberList = new List<int> { 4, 1, 3, 1, 3, 4, 5 };
numberList.Sort();
numberList.Add(2);
numberList.Sort();
Console.WriteLine("Generic List Sorted");
numberList.ForEach(i => Console.WriteLine(i));
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
I did find a great article on datastructures in C# btw, and in fact its part of a game development series so if you are interested in a more detailed analysis of .NET collection classes (Arrays,Collections,Lists etc…) have a look
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/article/data_structures
Cheers
Dom
