Getting ready

To illustrate the concept of pattern matching, assume the following scenario. We have two object types called Student and Professor. We want to minimize code, so we want to create a single method to output the data from the object passed to it. This object can be a Student or a Professor object. The method needs to figure out which object it is working with and act accordingly. But first, we need to do a few things inside our console application to set things up:

1. Ensure that you have added the following using statement.

        using System.Collections.Generic;

1. You now need to create two new classes called Student and Professor. The code for the Student class needs to look as follows:

        public class Student
        {
          public string Name { get; set; }
          public string LastName { get; set; } 
          public List<int> CourseCodes { get; set; }
        }

1. Next, the code for the Professor class needs to look as follows:

        public class Professor
        {
          public string Name { get; set; }
          public string LastName { get; set; }
          public List<string> TeachesSubjects { get; set; }
        }

To understand where we are going with pattern matching, we first need to understand where we have come from. I will start the next section off by showing you how developers might have written this code before C# 7.0.