We need to associate different pieces of data, like a size and name, to each Forest
object. In C#, these pieces of data are called fields. Fields are one type of class member, which is the general term for the building blocks of a class.
Create fields like this:
class Forest { public string name; public int trees; }
This might look similar to defining a variable. It is! Each field is a variable and it will have a different value for each object.
With the code above, we haven’t set the value of either field, so each has a default value. In this case string
s default to null
, int
s to 0
, and bool
s to false
. You can find the default values for more types in Microsoft’s default values table.
It is common practice to name fields using all lowercase (name
instead of Name
). This makes fields easy to recognize later on!
Don’t worry about public
yet: it’s explained later in this lesson.
Once we create a Forest
instance, we can access and edit each field with dot notation:
Forest f = new Forest(); f.name = "Amazon"; Console.WriteLine(f.name); // Prints "Amazon" Forest f2 = new Forest(); f2.name = "Congo"; Console.WriteLine(f2.name); // Prints "Congo"
Each instance has a name
field, but the value may differ across instances.
Instructions
In Forest.cs, add 4 fields to the Forest
class.
Two fields of type string
:
name
biome
Two fields of type int
:
trees
age
In Program.cs in Main()
, a Forest
object has already been instantiated. Set values to those four fields.
In Main()
, print the name
field to the console.