Enumerate an object in an ArrayList by index

Question

I have an ArrayList of objects. This is sort of a quick and dirty thing, so the objects are not a class, just defined by a statement like

struct mp3
    {
        public string FileNm;
        public int RecNum ;
        ...

     }

My question is can I access the individual elements of the object using an index rather that name?

For example, instead of ArrayList1[44].FileNm I want to use ArrayList1[44][0] or something like that.

This is so I can use a loop to quickly go through all elements of the struct.

Vulpes · Answer

Just as a matter of interest you could do something like you wanted if you were to use a generic List rather than an ArrayList and add an indexer to your struct. Here's a simple example I've just thrown together: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; struct mp3 { public string FileNm; public int RecNum ; // ... public object this[int index] { get { switch(index) { case 0: return FileNm; case 1: return RecNum; default: return null; } } set { switch(index) { case 0: FileNm = (string)value; return; case 1: RecNum = (int)value; return; } } } public override string ToString() { return String.Format(FileNm = {0} RecNum = {1} FileNm RecNum); } } class Test { static void Main() { List list = new List (); mp3 item = new mp3(); item.FileNm = 1; item.RecNum = 2; list.Add(item); Console.WriteLine(list[0][0]); Console.WriteLine(list[0][1]); Console.ReadKey(); } } If list were an ArrayList instead then you'd need to cast to mp3 before you could apply the indexer which makes the code rather ugly: Console.WriteLine(((mp3)list[0])[0]); Console.WriteLine(((mp3)list[0])[1]);

Michael Cort · Answer

Thanks. That will work since I am using it for debugging really.

Vulpes · Answer

No it's not possible to do that but if you override the ToString method in your struct it makes it easier to enumerate the ArrayList: struct mp3 { public string FileNm; public int RecNum ; // ... public override string ToString() { return String.Format(FileNm = {0} RecNum = {1} FileNm RecNum); } } foreach(mp3 item in ArrayList1) Console.WriteLine(item);