Collections

Data Structures

A data structure lets us hold on to lots of data in a single place. It is a programming construct to aggregate many values into one value. Many types of data structures exist in various languages. A few examples are lists, dictionaries, arrays, tuples, etc.

C# Collections Namespace

C# provides powerful and flexible structures to store data, known as collections. The C# collections namespace refers to the various interfaces the language provides for implementing collection types. When working with collection types, we often have to use the collections namespace.

Here, we’ll discuss a collection called List and compare it to the Array class. We’ll then introduce a third collection type called Dictionary. These three collection types will be sufficient for our basic C# needs. For more, refer to the official C# documentation on collections .

using System.Collections.Generic;

Gradebook, Three Ways

We’ll explore collections in C# by looking at different versions of the same program. The program functions as a gradebook, allowing a user (a professor or teacher) to enter the class roster for a course, along with each student’s grade. It then prints the class roster along with the average grade. In each variation of this program, the grading system could be anything numeric, such as a 0.0-4.0 point scale, or a 0-100 percentage scale.

A test run of the program might yield the following:

Enter your students (or ENTER to finish):
Chris
Jesse
Sally

Grade for Chris: 3.0
Grade for Jesse: 4.0
Grade for Sally: 3.5

Class roster:
Chris (3.0)
Jesse (4.0)
Sally (3.5)

Average grade: 3.5

We’ll look at the gradebook using a List first.