Why collections over arrays in C Sharp (C#) - See It in Action

Why Collections Over Arrays in C#

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are managing a list of books in a library system. You want to store book titles and be able to add or remove books easily.

🎯 Goal: You will learn why using collections like List<string> is better than arrays for managing dynamic data like book titles.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array of book titles

Create a collection (List) of book titles

Add a new book title to the collection

Print the contents of both the array and the collection

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Managing dynamic lists of items like books, users, or products where the number can change.

💼 Career

Understanding collections is essential for writing flexible and maintainable C# applications in software development jobs.

1

Create an array of book titles

Create a string array called bookArray with these exact titles: "C# Basics", "Learn LINQ", "ASP.NET Core".

C Sharp (C#)

# Create a string array called bookArray with the given titles
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces { } to initialize the array with the given strings.

2

Create a collection (List) of book titles

Create a List<string> called bookList and initialize it with the same titles as bookArray.

C Sharp (C#)

string[] bookArray = { "C# Basics", "Learn LINQ", "ASP.NET Core" };
# Create a List called bookList with the same titles
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use new List<string> { ... } to create and initialize the list.

3

Add a new book title to the collection

Add the book title "Entity Framework" to the bookList using the Add method.

C Sharp (C#)

using System.Collections.Generic;

string[] bookArray = { "C# Basics", "Learn LINQ", "ASP.NET Core" };
List bookList = new List { "C# Basics", "Learn LINQ", "ASP.NET Core" };
# Add "Entity Framework" to bookList
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use bookList.Add("Entity Framework") to add the new title.

4

Print the contents of both the array and the collection

Use a foreach loop to print each title in bookArray and then each title in bookList. Print "Array:" before the array titles and "List:" before the list titles.

C Sharp (C#)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

string[] bookArray = { "C# Basics", "Learn LINQ", "ASP.NET Core" };
List bookList = new List { "C# Basics", "Learn LINQ", "ASP.NET Core" };
bookList.Add("Entity Framework");

# Print "Array:" and then each title in bookArray
# Print "List:" and then each title in bookList
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use two foreach loops and Console.WriteLine to print the titles.