In a recent past there has been a lot of talk about whats new in C# 6.0
One of the most talked about feature is using Dictionary
initializers in C# 6.0
But wait we have been using collection initializers to initialize the collections and can very well initialize a Dictionary
also in .NET 4.0 and .NET 4.5 (Don't know about old version) like
Dictionary<int, string> myDict = new Dictionary<int, string>() {
{ 1,"Pankaj"},
{ 2,"Pankaj"},
{ 3,"Pankaj"}
};
So what is there new in C# 6.0, What Dictionary Initializer they are talking about in C# 6.0
While you could initialize a dictionary with collection initializers, it's quite cumbersome. Especially for something that's supposed to be syntactic sugar.
Dictionary initializers are much cleaner:
var myDict = new Dictionary<int, string>
{
[1] = "Pankaj",
[2] = "Pankaj",
[3] = "Pankaj"
};
More importantly these initializers aren't just for dictionaries, they can be used for any object supporting an indexer, for example List<T>
:
var array = new[] { 1, 2, 3 };
var list = new List<int>(array) { [1] = 5 };
foreach (var item in list)
{
Console.WriteLine(item);
}
Output:
1
5
3
New is creating a dictionary this way
Dictionary<int, string> myDict = new Dictionary<int, string>() {
[1] = "Pankaj",
[2] = "Pankaj",
[3] = "Pankaj"
};
with the style of <index> = <value>
Obsolete: string indexed member syntax (as stated in the comments)
Dictionary<int, string> myDict = new Dictionary<int, string>() {
$1 = "Pankaj",
$2 = "Pankaj",
$3 = "Pankaj"
};
Taken from A C# 6.0 Language Preview
To understand the $ operator, take a look at the AreEqual function call. Notice the Dictionary member invocation of “$Boolean” on the builtInDataTypes variable—even though there’s no “Boolean” member on Dictionary. Such an explicit member isn’t required because the $ operator invokes the indexed member on the dictionary, the equivalent of calling buildInDataTypes["Boolean"].