What's the simplest .NET equivalent of a VB6 control array?

Question

Maybe I just don\'t know .NET well enough yet, but I have yet to see a satisfactory way to implement this simple VB6 code easily in .NET (assume this code is on a form with

Answer 1

There is no real 1 to 1 analog in .Net. Sure, you can make arrays or lists of controls of a specific type, but there's nothing that will do that for you automatically.

However, I've never seen a control array that couldn't be refactored in .Net to something better. A case in point is your example. In the scenario you posted, you're using control arrays to pair a button up with a textbox. In .Net, you would probably do this with a custom control. The custom control would consist of a button, a textbox, and maybe a shared/static timer. The form uses several instances of this custom control. You implement the logic needed for the control once, and it's isolated to it's own source file which can be tracked and edited in source control without requiring a merge with the larger form class, or easily re-used on multiple forms or even in multiple projects. You also don't have to worry about making sure the command button index matches up with the textbox index.

Using a custom control for this instead of a control array is loosely analogous to using class to group data instead of an array, in that you get names instead of indexes.