koobas.hobune.stream
How would one use a pointer variable to reference an array element?
Suppose I have an array of a custom class that takes a string and two ints:
public Statistic[] stats = new Statistic[]
{new Statistic("Health", 100, 100),
new Statistic("Stamina", 50, 50),
new Statistic("Attack", 5, 5),
new Statistic("Defend", 4, 4),
new Statistic("Speed", 3, 3),
new Statistic("Luck", 3, 3)};
I would love it if I could reference these elements through some kind of shorthand. For instance,
//referencing
stats.hp
//would point to the same data as
stats[0]
Is this a thing? My apologies if this has been asked before, I did some searching but I found it difficult to come up with a concise query. It's really a readability thing that would be really nice to have. Thanks awfully for the help! -Luke
I don't really get your problem. "stats[0].hp" should work if your Statistic class has public/internal variable/property named hp.
This is really a basic C# question. What I mean is, you can get a much better explanation in a regular C# guide.
All class-variables in C# are really just pointers, and any class-variable can not use new, and ins$$anonymous$$d just point to any existing item. A common example is how GameObject player=GameObject.Find("player"); uses player as a pointer (C# calls them references.)
You can't point to a item in any old array (like an array of ints.) Array is just a red-herring. You can point to any class, whether the class is in an array or not.
Yes, quite easily:
public Statistic[] stats = new Statistic[]
{new Statistic("Health", 100, 100),
new Statistic("Stamina", 50, 50),
new Statistic("Attack", 5, 5),
new Statistic("Defend", 4, 4),
new Statistic("Speed", 3, 3),
new Statistic("Luck", 3, 3)};
var stat = stats[2];
stat.hp = 200;
Well, that doesn't quite solve the problem, but it helped me figure it out so I'm marking it right.
In the first place, I neglected to tell you that stats is initialized outside of the game loop- like before Start or Update in the class.
so that means that the pointer variable has to be initialized inside start or awake.
stat.hp is a typo, I think you meant stats.hp- and that wouldn't work as hp is not a field of the class Statistic. That's what you got wrong.
var stat is javascript (not your fault, I didn't specify.), so that would be
Statistic hp = stats[0];
and then I can change the value of hp and it will also change stats[0];
Glad it helped, to an extent!
stat.hp was not exactly a typo, but indeed, if hp is not an attribute of the Statistics class, it won't work. stats.hp would also fail but for a different reason; it wouldn't be trying to access the hp field within the Statistic class, but the hp field within a Statistic[] array. This is not possible because an array wouldn't have such a field (you could, however, access, for instance, stats.length).
var stat = stats[2] is both C# and JavaScript code, though the var keyword is probably indeed more popular in JavaScript. They have different meanings, however. In JavaScript var is used to declare a local variable. In C# var is used as a shortcut for the type, which is statically inferred. Basically, it's just syntactic sugar to type less. You can use it within a method scope but not within a class scope, so depending on your case you may not be able to use it anyway.
