Does GetComponents() return the components in the order that they are displayed in the editor?

Questions & Answers
1

My preliminary testing indicates the array returned by calling GetComponents() on a GameObject matches the top-to-bottom order that these components are arranged in the editor. Can anyone confirm that this is correct and/or reliable?

Thanks!

2

Apparently this is correct, but I would not bet my life on this! Unity may decide to change the order in future versions, since this isn’t a documented feature.

Do you have multiple components of the same type attached to your game object and want to access each one independently? If so, a common solution for components added at runtime is to get a reference to each one from AddComponent - kind of:

private var audio1: AudioSource;
private var audio2: AudioSource;
private var audio3: AudioSource;

function Start(){
  audio1 = gameObject.AddComponent(AudioSource);
  audio2 = gameObject.AddComponent(AudioSource);
  audio3 = gameObject.AddComponent(AudioSource);
}

Unfortunately, there’s no general solution for components added in the Editor. For AudioSources (the most frequent multiple component), however, the priority field may be used as a temporary ID: you can set the first AudioSource priority to 128 in the Inspector, the second to 129, and so on; at Start, get the AudioSources in an array, identify each one and, if necessary, set their priority values to whatever they should be (the field priority is used only when there are too many AudioSources playing at the same time, and small variations around the default 128 usually don’t make any difference.