Instantiation when making code changes in runtime

Questions & Answers
1

If I have the following List that gets instantiated on Start():

private List<KeyValuePair<string, Texture2D>> _items;

void Start() {
    _items = new List<KeyValuePair<string, Texture2D>> ();
}

When I collect items in the game like so:

public void AddItem (string name, Texture2D texture)
{
	_items.Add (new KeyValuePair<string, Texture2D> (name, texture));
}

Every time I make a code change when debugging I get an error because _items is null because it needs to be instantiated again.

Is there anything I can do to remember the state of the list if I make code changes during debug/runtime?

2

You can just do this at the declaration of the KeyValuePair.

 private List<KeyValuePair<string, Texture2D>> _items = new List<KeyValuePair<string, Texture2D>> ();

Also its just a suggestion, won’t a Dictionary be better? It’s just a list of KeyValuePairs but represented better and with more helpful methods.