C# windows program help needed!

joe123

Ive just started windows programming this year ( hate it as its impossible) anyways what I have to do is have a form with two text boxes one with first names and one with surnames using arrays.

It will show up a list of names hard coded so it will happen just when it loads. Ive to use arrays to load the names in each text box.

string [] names = {"john", "mick"} blah blah. I cant get the names to display in the text boxes once I run it. All i get is system.String[]. I know that i just have to double click the form in design to have the load event happen.

How do I get it to work? I can do it with listboxes ok but cant get them to load in the text boxes?

Not sure if ive explained it well but any help would be great thanks.

AlmightyCushion

Can you post up the code you have done so far? It would help us see where you are going wrong.

joe123

namespace RandomNames
{
public partial class frmRandomNames : Form
{
public frmRandomNames()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

private void frmRandomNames_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string[] names ={ "John", "Mary", "Jack", "Frank", "Mel", "Horace", "Henry", "Declan" };
txtFirstName.Text =names.ToString();

string [] surName = { "Malone", "casey", "Humbolt", "Davey", "Seinnheiser", "Bradley", "Kehoe", "Lomax", "Reilly", "Nielsen" };
txtSurName.Text = surName.ToString();

}

}
}


I cant seem to get the array to display the list of names. What am i doing wrong? thanks for the help and im pretty bad at programming so go easy:o

AlmightyCushion

What you need to do is iterate through the array with a loop and then display the current element.

joe123

frsName[0] = "john";
frsName[1] = "mary";
frsName[2] = "jack";
frsName[3] = "frank";
frsName[4] = "mel";
frsName[5] = "horace";
frsName[6] = "henry";
frsName[7] = "declan";

for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)

should it look more like that?

AlmightyCushion

joe123 wrote: »

frsName[0] = "john";
frsName[1] = "mary";
frsName[2] = "jack";
frsName[3] = "frank";
frsName[4] = "mel";
frsName[5] = "horace";
frsName[6] = "henry";
frsName[7] = "declan";

You already have the elements in the array declared so there is no need to do this.

joe123 wrote: »

for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)

should it look more like that?

That will run 8 times. What happens if you take away or add an element to the array?

joe123

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

That will run 8 times. What happens if you take away or add an element to the array?

Does that matter? Im given the 8 names. They wont change. I click the load names button and these 8 names are supposed to appear in the First name text box.

Problem is I dont know how im supposed to go through the loop and display the names.

index of or .items or something?

Creamy Goodness

joe123 wrote: »

Does that matter? Im given the 8 names. They wont change. I click the load names button and these 8 names are supposed to appear in the First name text box.

Problem is I dont know how im supposed to go through the loop and display the names.

index of or .items or something?

it's not that it matters that much, it's just a bad habit to get into.

when working with arrays it's always good to use a constant value when accessing the values of the array through a loop.

eg.

constant ARRAY_SIZE = 8

for i in ARRAY_SIZE
do
yadda = yadda
done

this way if you add/remove elements from the array you only have to change the value stored in your constant

have a google for using arrays in c# the first hit i got displayed how to properly loop through an array without hard coding values in.

Malice

Cremo wrote: »

it's not that it matters that much, it's just a bad habit to get into.

when working with arrays it's always good to use a constant value when accessing the values of the array through a loop.

eg.

constant ARRAY_SIZE = 8

for i in ARRAY_SIZE
do
yadda = yadda
done

this way if you add/remove elements from the array you only have to change the value stored in your constant

You're absolutely right about it being a bad idea to hardcode array boundaries but I always get the array boundary by doing something like this:

[PHP]
// Define the array
string [] inputArray = { "John", "Mary", "Jack", "Frank", "Mel", "Horace", "Henry", "Declan" };
int uBound = inputArray.GetUpperBound(0);
[/PHP]That way you never need to worry about having to change a constant as your code automatically calculates the boundary for you.

Mutant_Fruit

The usual way to do it is:

string[] names = new string[] { James, Jim, Joe, John, Jan };

for(int i=0; i < names.Length; i++)
     DoThingToAddToTextBox();    

The 'DoThingToAddToTextBox' could be to call textbox.Append(string) or possibly just textbox.Text = textbox.Text + currentname, or a fancier way using a string builder to generate the required string first.

The reason why "txtFirstName.Text =names.ToString();" didn't work as you expected is that .ToString() is not overridden on an array type to do anything useful, so it just defaults to printing out the type name, in your case "System.string[]" is the type of the object.

amen

you would be better doing
[PHP]
int numArrayelements = names.Length;
no need to array each time and its neater!

[/PHP]