I have a question about the hastable code below. I'm not sure what the private member _emailHashtable does in this code. What is the Public ReadOnly Property EmailHashtable returning? The code works the same if instead of using this Public ReadOnly Property we used _emailHashtable everywhere. I don't understand why we needed both _emailHashtable and the Public Property EmailHashtable. When Public ReadOnly Property EmailHashtable returns _emailHashtable what is in this value? Is anything assigned to it?


Inherits System.Collections.CollectionBase
' members...
Private _emailHashtable As New Hashtable()

' Add - add a customer...
Public Sub Add(ByVal newCustomer As Customer)
   Me.List.Add(newCustomer)

  ' add to the hashtable...
   EmailHashtable.Add(newCustomer.Email, newCustomer)
End Sub

' EmailHashtable - return the e-mail hashtable...
Public ReadOnly Property EmailHashtable() As Hashtable
  Get
     Return _emailHashtable ' What is retunred here???????
  End Get
End Property

Default Public ReadOnly Property Item(ByVal email As String) _
As Customer
Get
Return EmailHashtable.Item(email)
End Get
End Property

End Class

Hello,

Public properyt only exposes the variable _emailHashTable, which I assume is created in the constructor. You need the underlying hashtable to store the data somewhere; the property only exposes it to the user of the class. So whomever uses the class can access the EmailHashtable property, which returns a reference to the _emailHashtable.

Does that make sense?

Brian

Yeah, I do understand that. I just don’t see where the _emailHashtable gets assigned anywhere in the code. In the Add Sub it’s the EmailHashtable Property that gets added to. I expected that the _emailHashtable would get added to and then the EmailHashtable Property would return the value.

Thank you for your response