6.3 Creating an object with the new operator

6.3 Creating an object with the new operator

Like Java, there is only one way ^[4] to create a new object in C# “ by using the new keyword.

^[4] There are two ways to create a new object in C++. Car c(); (creates a Car object on the stack), and Car *c = new Car(); (creates a Car object on the heap). For the case of C#, you can only create an instance of an object using the new keyword. There is no way for the C# developer to control whether a new object is to be created on the heap or stack. All C# objects (reference types) are created on the heap, and all value types are created on the stack.

Like Java

Creating an object in C# is very similar to creating an object in Java. The following statement creates a new object object ( object with a small ' o ' is an alias for the System.Object class in C#):

 new object(); 

The expression returns an object reference to the new object created on the heap, which you should assign to a variable of an appropriate reference type.

The following works fine:

 object o = new object(); 

Unlike Java

In C#, the keyword new can also be used to create a method which hides a method of the same signature in a superclass. So, don't be surprised to see a method being declared like ' new public void DoSomething(); ' in C#. This is called ' name hiding', or in this case 'method hiding'.