How to declare an array of objects in C#

Question

I have a very beginning C# question. Suppose I have a class called GameObject, and I want to create an array of GameObject entities. I could think

Answer 1

The issue here is that you've initialized your array, but not its elements; they are all null. So if you try to reference houses[0], it will be null.

Here's a great little helper method you could write for yourself:

T[] InitializeArray<T>(int length) where T : new()
{
    T[] array = new T[length];
    for (int i = 0; i < length; ++i)
    {
        array[i] = new T();
    }

    return array;
}

Then you could initialize your houses array as:

GameObject[] houses = InitializeArray<GameObject>(200);

Answer 2

The reason this is happening is because initializing an array does not initialize each element in that array. You need to first set houses[0] = new GameObject() and then it will work.

Answer 3

you need to initialize the object elements of the array.

GameObject[] houses = new GameObject[200];

for (int i=0;`i<house` i<houses.length; i++)
{ houses[i] = new GameObject();}

Of course you initialize elements selectively using different constructors anywhere else before you reference them.

Answer 4

I guess GameObject is a reference type. Default for reference types is null => you have an array of nulls.

You need to initialize each member of the array separatedly.

houses[0] = new GameObject(..);

Only then can you access the object without compilation errors.

So you can explicitly initalize the array:

for (int i = 0; i < houses.Length; i++)
{
    houses[i] = new GameObject();
}

or you can change GameObject to value type.

Answer 5

With LINQ, you can transform the array of uninitialized elements into the new collection of created objects with one line of code.

var houses = new GameObject[200].Select(h => new GameObject()).ToArray();

Actually, you can use any other source for this, even generated sequence of integers:

var houses = Enumerable.Repeat(0, 200).Select(h => new GameObject()).ToArray();

However, the first case seems to me more readable, although the type of original sequence is not important.

Answer 6

Everything you have looks fine.

The only thing I can think of (without seeing the error message, which you should have provided), is that GameObject needs a default (no parameter) constructor.