Programmatically using a string as object name when instantiating an object

Question

This is a contrived example, but lets say I have declared objects:

CustomObj fooObj;
CustomObj barObj;
CustomObj bazObj;

And I have an string array:

string[] stringarray = new string[] {"foo","bar","baz"};

How can I programmatically access and instantiate those objects using the string array, iterating using something like a foreach:

foreach (string i in stringarray) {
    `i`Obj = new CustomObj(i);
}

Hope the idea I'm trying to get across is clear. Is this possible in C#?

Answer 1

You need to be clear in your mind about the difference between an object and a variable. Objects themselves don't have names. Variable names are decided at compile-time. You can't access variables via an execution-time-determined name except via reflection.

It sounds like you really just want a Dictionary<string, CustomObj>:

Dictionary<string, CustomObj> map = new Dictionary<string, CustomObj>();

foreach (string name in stringArray)
{
    map[name] = new CustomObj(name);
}

You can then access the objects using the indexer to the dictionary.

If you're really trying to set the values of variables based on their name at execution time, you'll have to use reflection (see Type.GetField). Note that this won't work for local variables.