C# 7 Indexing Fixed Fields Without Pinning

The fixed statement prevents the garbage collector from relocating a movable variable. The fixed statement is only permitted in an unsafe context.

You can also use the fixed keyword to create fixed-size buffers as shown below.

unsafe struct MyStructure
{
    public fixed int myFixedField[10];
}

Before C# 7.3, we used the fixed statement to set a managed variable to a pointer and pins that variable during the execution of the statement.

Let's consider the following example in which we have created two variables of type MyStructure. The numbers variable contains values from 0 to 9 and the cubes variable contains their cube values.

MyStructure numbers = new MyStructure();
MyStructure cubes = new MyStructure();

public unsafe void PrintArrayUsingPinning()
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    {
        fixed (int* ptrNumbers = numbers.myFixedField)
        fixed (int* ptrCubes = cubes.myFixedField)
        {
            ptrNumbers[i] = i;
            ptrCubes[i] = i * i * i;
        }
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    {
        fixed (int* ptrNumbers = numbers.myFixedField)
        fixed (int* ptrCubes = cubes.myFixedField)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(ptrNumbers[i] + " cube " + ptrCubes[i]);
        }
    }
}

Pointers to movable managed variables are useful only in a fixed context. Without a fixed context, garbage collection could relocate the variables unpredictably. The C# compiler only lets you assign a pointer to a managed variable in a fixed statement.

• Basically, you need to take a reference to the fixed field and save it into a pointer.
• Then inside the fixed statement body, you can use the pointer to make changes to the particular variable.
• Similarly, you can use the same syntax to access elements of the fixed array.

Now in C# 7.3, this new feature allows you to index fixed fields without doing any pinning.

public unsafe void PrintArrayWithoutPinning()
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    {
        numbers.myFixedField[i] = i;
        cubes.myFixedField[i] = i * i * i;
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(numbers.myFixedField[i] + " cube " + cubes.myFixedField[i]);
    }
}

As you can see that we do not need to use the fixed statement anymore to access those fields.