I needed a simple array of strings today, and I needed to be able to return it via a property. I could use a simple array, but that has some significant drawbacks. I could use an ArrayList, but the indexer returns an object, which would force the application to always cast it. I decided to derive a class from ArrayList and change the indexer. Something like this would work:

public class EmailList : System.Collections.ArrayList
{
public void Add(string email) { base.Add(email); }
public new string this[int index] {
    get { return (string)base[index]; }
    set { base[index] = value; }
  }
}

Notice the “new” keyword for the indexer. This tells the compiler to override the indexer provided by the base class. Now, whatever classes use this class can get a string back from the array list without having to cast it every time. There are other things you can do to customize this collection, but it’s a good start.