initialize class array "correctly"

Question

Right, I have a simple class for any upgrade the player can get, including an array containing the cost of each upgrade level, so my initialization looks like:
myUpgrade.description="some description here";
myUpgrade.maxUpgrade=10;
myUpgrade.upgradeCostArray[0]=100;
myUpgrade.upgradeCostArray[1]=230;
myUpgrade.upgradeCostArray[2]=233;
.
.
myUpgrade.upgradeCostArray[9]=12233;
As you can see this doesn't look too good- I have a predefined size 10 int array in my class, AND if any value in the array that is below maxUpgrade is not initialized it will only show up during runtime.  Is there a cleaner way of doing this, perhaps somehow with a constructor?

Suthish Nair · Answer

good one Vulpes..

Vulpes · Answer

Sure, it's what's called an 'automatic' property.
With a normal property you'd have, say, this:
private string description; // private backing field
public string Description  {       get { return description; }      set { description = value; }   }
The following automatic property would do exactly the same thing:
public string Description{ get; set;}
The difference is that the C# compiler generates the backing field automatically and you can't normally actually access it from C# (though you can get at it using reflection). You just get or set it through the property.
If we now change the accessor on the 'set' to private:
public string Description{ get; private set;}
then only methods inside the MyUpgrade class can assign a value to the property. This makes it effectively read-only as far as code outside the class is concerned.

yuriy thebest · Answer

yess! that worked perfectly! can you explain how {get; private set;} works or what exactly it does?

Vulpes · Answer

Yes, you could use a constructor to initialize the array.
The code would be something like this:
using System;
class MyUpgrade {   public string Description{ get; private set;}   public int[] UpgradeCostArray{ get; private set; }
public int MaxUpgrade   {      get { return UpgradeCostArray.Length; }   }      public MyUpgrade(string description,int[] upgradeCostArray)   {       Description = description;       UpgradeCostArray = upgradeCostArray;   } }
class Test {    static void Main()    {       int[] array = {100, 230, 233, 12233}; // just do 4 for illustration       MyUpgrade myUpgrade = new MyUpgrade("some description here", array);       Console.WriteLine(myUpgrade.MaxUpgrade); // 4       Console.WriteLine(myUpgrade.UpgradeCostArray[3]); // 12233       Console.ReadKey();    } }