Can't assign value to an array in Visual Studio

Question

For some reason I can't assign a value to an element in an array that I just initialized. I can initialize and assign to the elements in an array if I do it within the same line of code. However, in this application the elements are going to have a lot of text so I want them to be assigned afterwards. It works in Treehouse's workplaces environment but not on Visual Studio. Can anyone figure it out (Probably something simple) ? Thanks in advance.

Comes up with these error messages: CS0270 Array size cannot be specified in a variable declaration (try initializing with a 'new' expression) CS1519 Invalid token '=' in class, struct, or interface member declaration CS0103 The name 'option' does not exist in the current context.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace TouchTypingGame
{
    class Passages
    {
        string[] option = new string[8];

        option[0] = "Hello"; //this is the only line that seems to be the problem;
    }
}

Answer 1 · 2017-12-28T15:30:12Z

December 28, 2017 3:30pm

Your problem here is that you are building a class not running commands in REPL. anything thats not contained in a method is read as a member variable. option[0] = "Hello"; is not a valid member variable. It works on one line because you can initialize the variable in its declaration.

You could do it separately by adding this instruction to the constructor like this:

    class Passages
    {
        string[] option;
        public Passages() 
        {
             option = new string[8];
             option[0] = "Hello"; //this is the only line that seems to be the problem;
        }
    }

or you could do it all on one line as you suggested you have tried, this should work:

class Passages
    {
        string[] option = new string[8] {"Hello"};
    }

the single line should work for what you need. The assignment of the value is only done when the object is constructed and can be changed later as long as the const or readonly keywords are not used. This is an example of 'syntactic sugar' the single line solution accomplishes the same thing but is much easier to read.

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Kyle Rayner

Kyle Rayner

Can't assign value to an array in Visual Studio

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Allan Clark

Allan Clark

Kyle Rayner

Kyle Rayner