#825 – Shallow Copies

April 18, 2013 5 Comments

When making a copy of an object, you can either make a shallow copy or a deep copy.  A shallow copy is one in which the exact values of all data members of the object are copied.  You can think of this as byte-for-byte copy of the original object.

With a shallow copy, reference-typed members are copied by copying the reference to the object, rather than by making a new copy of the child object.

For example, if a Dog object contains a reference to a DogCollar object and we make a shallow copy, we get the following:

825-001

The problem with a shallow copy is that the second object is now referencing the sub-objects that the first object pointed to.  In many cases, this may not be what you want.  In the example above, if we change the first dog’s collar, we also change the second dog’s collar.

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#689 – References and Objects

October 10, 2012 1 Comment

A variable whose type is a reference type can be declared without making the variable point to an instance of that type (an object).  At this point, the value of the variable will be null.

A reference-typed variable can later be assigned to refer to an instance of the appropriate type, or it can be assigned at the point where it is declared.

            Dog myDog;
            myDog = new Dog("Kirby", 13);

            Dog yourDog = new Dog("Ruby", 2);

A reference-typed variable can be re-assigned to refer to a difference instance of the type.  (If an object is no longer referenced by any variables, it will eventually be garbage collected).

            Dog jack = new Dog("Jack", 15);
            Dog kirby = new Dog("Kirby", 13);

            Dog currentDog = jack;
            currentDog = kirby;

Notice also in this example that more than one reference-typed variable can refer to the same object.

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#228 – Object-Oriented Programming in C# Using Classes

January 31, 2011 1 Comment

Classes are the construct in C# that enable the object-oriented paradigm and make C# an object-oriented language.

Classes are the user-defined types that define a set of related data and the methods that act upon that data.  Each instance of the class (an object) has a set of values for the class’ data, know as the object’s state.

Object-orientation is a powerful paradigm to use when writing software because using classes and objects helps you think about things, rather than algorithms.

For example, we might have a Dog class with data fields like: Name, Age, Breed, LikesBalls, and PersonalityType.  We might have methods in the Dog class like Bark, Sit, and Fetch.  Each instance of a Dog would have different values for these fields and we can call any of the Dog methods on an instance of a dog and it would respond based on the value of these fields.

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#227 – Instances of Classes Are Created on the Heap

January 30, 2011 1 Comment

Because they are reference types, instances of classes are stored on the heap.  When you instantiate (or create) an instance of a class, the actual object is created on the heap and you reference the newly created object with a variable whose type corresponds to the class’ type.  The variable that references the object is stored on the stack.

            // New Person object created on the heap
            // p variable is a stack-based reference to the new object
            Person p = new Person("Cary", "Grant");

Because a class object is created on the heap, you don’t destroy the object explicitly, but it is automatically garbage collected.  The object will be a candidate for garbage collection when there are no longer any variables that reference the object.

            p = new Person("Jimmy", "Stewart");

            // No variable references Cary Grant anymore,
            // so he can be garbage-collected.

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#188 – Objects Are on the Heap, References to Objects Are on the Stack

December 22, 2010 5 Comments

When you instantiate an object, an area of memory on the heap is allocated to store the object’s data.  So we typically say that the object is on the heap.

            Person thatGuy = new Person("Julius", "Caesar");

In the above example, a new instance of the Person class is created and the data for this Person is stored on the heap.

But in creating a new instance of a Person, we also had to declare and instantiate a reference to the Person object that we just created.  That reference is stored on the stack.

In the same way that value types are normally stored on the stack, but can be on the heap if they exist within another object, object references can also be on the heap if they are contained within other objects.

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#42 – Interacting with an Object

July 29, 2010 Leave a comment

Once you create an instance of a reference type using the new keyword, you can interact with the new object through the variable that serves as a reference to that object.  You can call the object’s methods or read and write its properties.

 // Make a new Person object
 Person p1 = new Person("Sean", 46);

 // Read some properties
 string theName = p1.Name;   // Sean
 int howOld = p1.Age;        // 46

 // Set Age property to new value
 p1.Age = p1.Age - 10;
 int younger = p1.Age;       // Now 36

 // Call method that takes no parameters, returns description
 //   Will return:  Sean is 36 yrs old.
 string describe = p1.Description();

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