Compared to other languages, C# was way behind in capabilities to handle data efficiently. Well, those days are over now. Microsoft just improved the C# syntax, making it easier for developers to manage data in arrays. Manipulating Arrays Have you ever had to manipulate a large set of data in multiple arrays? Of course you have! And I guess your experience wasn't that good. Compared to other languages, C# was way behind in capabilities to handle data efficiently. Well, those days are over now. Microsoft just improved the C# syntax, making it easier for developers to manage data in arrays. The new guys Two new operators have been introduced in C# 8.0 to give you all the power you need: The operator: , which specifies that an index is relative to the end of the sequence; and 'index from the end' ^ The operator: , which specifies the start and end of a range. 'range' .. Important notes The index is the same as . ^0 sequence[sequence.Length] Be careful, throw an , just as does. sequence[^0] does IndexOutOfRangeException sequence[sequence.Length] For any number , the index is the same as . n ^n sequence.Length - n For ranges, the start of the range is , but the end of the range is . inclusive exclusive The range represents the entire sequence, just as or . [0..0^] [0..sequence.Length] [..] A range doesn't need to be completely defined, e.g. -> give me everything from the start of the array to index 3. [..3] -> give me everything from index 2 until the end of the array. [2..] -> give me everything [..] Examples Confused? I promise it will all make sense after this. Let's look at a few examples. [] words = []
{ , , , , , , , , }; private string new string // index from start    index from end "The" // 0                   ^9 "quick" // 1                   ^8 "brown" // 2                   ^7 "fox" // 3                   ^6 "jumped" // 4                   ^5 "over" // 5                   ^4 "the" // 6                   ^3 "lazy" // 7                   ^2 "dog" // 8                   ^1 As you can see here is equal to , which is out of range words[^0] words[9] Give me some more Alright, alright. Here are some more ways to use it. allWords = words[..]; firstPhrase = words[. ]; lastPhrase = words[ .]; lazyDog = words[^ .^ ]; var // contains "The" through "dog". var .4 // contains "The" through "fox". var 6. // contains "the, "lazy" and "dog". var 2. 0 // contains "lazy" and "dog". and are also .NET types, which means you can create variables of those types, name them for code clarity, and reuse them over and over. Index Range Index the = ^ ;
words[the];

Range phrase = ;
words[phrase]; 3 1. .4 Conclusion This is super powerful, I can't wait to use it in my projects. This will help so much with reducing noise when using index calculations as well as making the code more maintainable. Thank you Microsoft for this great addition to the language ❤️. References https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/whats-new/csharp-8 Previously published at https://blog.miguelbernard.com/c-8-0-indices-and-ranges/

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