C# 0 The Complete Reference

Floors

,

Area

, and 

Occupants

. To access 

these variables, you will use the member access operator, which is a period. It is commonly 

referred to as the 

dot operator.

 The dot operator links the name of an object with the name of 

a member. The general form of the dot operator is shown here:

object

.

member

Thus, the 

object

 is specified on the left, and the 

member

 is put on the right. For example, to 

assign the 

Floors

 variable of 

house

 the value 2, use the following statement:

house.Floors = 2;

In general, you can use the dot operator to access both instance variables and methods.

Here is a complete program that uses the 

Building

 class:

// A program that uses the Building class.

using System;

www.freepdf-books.com

---

112

 

P a r t   I :  

T h e   C #   L a n g u a g e

class Building {

  public int Floors;    // number of floors

  public int Area;      // total square footage of building

  public int Occupants; // number of occupants

}

// This class declares an object of type Building.

class BuildingDemo {

  static void Main() {

    Building house = new Building(); // create a Building object

    int areaPP; // area per person

    // Assign values to fields in house.

    house.Occupants = 4;

    house.Area = 2500;

    house.Floors = 2;

    // Compute the area per person.

    areaPP = house.Area / house.Occupants;

    Console.WriteLine("house has:\n  " +

                      house.Floors + " floors\n  " +

                      house.Occupants + " occupants\n  " +

                      house.Area + " total area\n  " +

                      areaPP + " area per person");

  }

}

This program consists of two classes: