How Can I Overload the Square-Bracket Operator (Indexer) in C#?

Overloading the Square-Bracket Operator in C#

The square-bracket operator, also known as the indexer, allows user-defined classes to behave like built-in collections, enabling access to their elements using indices. In C#, the indexer is implemented as a property with a special name "Item".

To use the indexer in your own classes, you need to declare a property with the following syntax:

public object this[int x, int y] { get {...}; set {...} }

In the code snippet, this represents the instance of the class, x and y are the indices, and get and set specify the logic for retrieving and setting values at the specified indices.

For example, the indexer in the DataGridView class allows you to access cells by providing row and column indices:

DataGridView dgv = ...;
DataGridViewCell cell = dgv[1,5];

The Item property of DataGridView is responsible for implementing the indexer behavior. The indexer for DataGridView does not throw exceptions, but it's important to note that you should handle invalid coordinates (out of range) explicitly in your own indexer implementations.

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