A bit of help

[ggerard]

Greetings all,
I've been going through a project that was orignially done in C# and converting it to vb.net (the original coder quit the project so I'm taking over and I dont much care for C#). Anyway, I'm down to 3 errors and they are all basically the same, it has to do with the sortedlist object.

The original line of code was this:

(list = this.m_dDamagePoints)[time = parsedLine.TimeStamp] = list[time] = parsedLine.Damage;

where:

list and m_dDamagePoints is a Sortedlist(Of Datetime, Long)

My question is, what is that line of c# code actually doing, and as a bonus, what would be the vb.net equivalent?

I ran it through a c# to vb.net converter and it came up with:
list = Me.m_dDamagePoints.Item(time = parsedLine.TimeStamp) = (list.Item(time) + parsedLine.Damage)

which is not valid of course. any ideas?

 

[jmcilhinney]

That is some of the worst C# code I've ever seen. Not only is it confusing but it's also redundant. For what that code actually does, it should simply be written:

this.m_dDamagePoints[parsedLine.TimeStamp] = parsedLine.Damage;

I'm guessing that you can work out the VB equivalent of that for yourself but, just in case:

Me.m_dDamagePoints(parsedLine.TimeStamp) = parsedLine.Damage

The key to understand why and how that ridiculous line of code worked is the fact that in C# an assignment returns a value, specifically the value that was assigned, while in VB they don't. For instance, this part:

(list = this.m_dDamagePoints)[B][U][time = parsedLine.TimeStamp][/U][/B] = list[time] = parsedLine.Damage;

assigns the value of parsedLine.TimeStamp to time and then returns that value. That return value is then used as a key into the list that's returned by the previous assignment.

 

[jmcilhinney]

By the way, tell your boss that they're lucky the previous person quit because they were either a hack or completely insane.

 

[ggerard]

Thanks

That makes so much more sense now...
yeah, I can see what you mean... very .. umm.. 'creative' way to do a simple assignment.
Thanks again for the help.


P.S. the former worker is now driving trucks for a living... still feel safe on the highway?