How is memory allocated when you create a property of class?

问题

I have the following class:

public class A
{
    public List<string> AList { get; set; }
}

Then I create object of a class:

A objectA = new A();
objectA.AList = new List<string>() { "1", "2", "3" };

My question is how memory will be allocated in a heap? I mean will be objectA.AList allocated inside of objectA (image1) or as a separate object in a heap(image2)

Image1:

Image2:

回答1:

The correct answer is : Image 3.

I'm not going to draw this but your example leads to 5 objects on the Heap.

Objects (instances) don't have names but they are referred to by the following references:

1. objectA
2. objectA.AList
3. objectA.AList[0]
4. objectA.AList[1]
5. objectA.AList[2]

Each string is also an object on its own.

The objectA instance only contains a reference to the List, and the List holds an array of references to strings. 3 are used, more might be allocated and still be null.

None of these objects lives 'inside' another.

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37293387/how-is-memory-allocated-when-you-create-a-property-of-class