Real world use cases for C# indexers?

Question

I\'ve seen lot of examples for c# Indexers, but in what way will it help me in real life situations.

I know the C# guru wouldn\'t have added this if it wasn\'t a ser

Answer 1

You can use an indexer to elegantly provide read/write multi-threading synchronization to a non-thread safe dictionary (or any non-thread safe collection):

internal class ThreadSafeIndexerClass
{
    public object this[int key]
    {
        get
        {
            // Aquire returns IDisposable and does Enter() Exit() on a certain ReaderWriterLockSlim instance
            using (_readLock.Aquire()) 
            {
                object subset;
                _dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out foundValue);
                return foundValue;
            }
        }
        set
        {
            // Aquire returns IDisposable and does Enter() Exit() on a certain ReaderWriterLockSlim instance
            using (_writeLock.Aquire())
                _dictionary[key] = value;
        }
    }
}

Useful especially when you don't want to use the heavyweight ConcurrentDictionary (or any other concurrent collection).