autumn cape
I'm currently stuck on the tracks on tracks on tracks exercise, for some reason, using .Add always returns void no matter what, any ideas why?
{
return languages.Add(language);
}```
```TracksOnTracksOnTracks.cs(16,16): error CS0029: Cannot implicitly convert type 'void' to 'System.Collections.Generic.List<string>'```
fickle agate
what do you think .Add() method does?
Let say i have : lst = [1,2,3,4,5]
then i call lst.Add(6)
what gonna happen?
autumn cape
hi again!
fickle agate
hello
autumn cape
I'm assuming it adds (in this case) a string to the list
autumn cape
Let say i have : lst = [1,2,3,4,5]
then i call lst.Add(6)
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
fickle agate
Right. And you want to have those values return or not in this case?
autumn cape
I do
fickle agate
Then what should you return?
autumn cape
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
same as this, the result
fickle agate
Yeah i mean in the context of the function
Which variable should be return
let me give you another example
let say you gimme a doll so i can add something nice to it
and i did (this is the add method)
then how do you get the doll back with its new stuff added?
autumn cape
would that be return languages.Add(language);
fickle agate
no. that is the process
that is me adding stuff to the doll
you want the doll back
autumn cape
OH
so
this isn't doll + accessories for example?
but most methods like this aren't the process and give the result instead
ahhh I see why it would be that way
fickle agate
correct. that is different
public void Add (T item);
what it does is it modify the list in place
autumn cape
I see
thank you!
I do have a question though
is there a more efficient way?
maybe something that could be written in a single line
fickle agate
I think this is the way to add to a list in C#
I think in python you could do something like : return list + list, but it is not a thing here
and dont be fooled into thinking because it happen in a single line it is more efficient
when you do : list + list in python, what happen is you creating a whole new list and return it
which in some language, the preferred way. however a lot of the time you just want to keep working with your current list, so modify it is a better choice
fickle agate
no problem. also look into mutable and immutable
autumn cape
will do!!
fickle agate
i think for you to understand this in a deeper level, you gonna have to wait until you start doing linked list data structure
autumn cape
makes sense, there's some things I haven't bothered looking into until I understand more of the basics
fickle agate
and another point, methods are basically function
but not all function have to return something
autumn cape
yeah, you can basically have methods simply to modify various variables etc by marking them as void