My C++ programmers out there should immediately recognize what these are. indexers are a mechanism by which we can use square bracket notation [] to access attributes of a class. Usually an attribute defined as an array but sometimes a collection of similar individual attributes. In other words: this is the subscript operator overload from C++. While the argument to indexers doesn't have to be integers, it almost always will be.

Let's take a look at an example of how this is implemented:

public class Course
{

private Student[] enrolled;
private ushort size, capacity;
// This data type isn't mocking your height — it's an unsigned short integer

public Student this[int index]
{

get { return enrolled[index];  }
set { enrolled[index] = value; }

}

}

This allows me to write code such as

Course thisClass;
thisClass[0] = myFirstStudent;

In order to directly access the private enrolled attribute of objects instantiated from Course class. Now, I would have included checks to ensure that index contains a legal value (between 0 and "capacity - 1"), but I'm formatting this code out in HTML, which is annoying enough as is.