Proper usage of array as field member in VB 2005

Question

I normally use C# and I'm attempting to convert a qbasic programmer to the joys of object oriented programming by easing him into VB 2005.

Below is a extremely simplified version of what I'm trying to accomplish. It successfully compiles, but all members in the array of card objects are set to "Nothing". The test line throws a NullReferenceException. What am I doing wrong?

    Sub Main()
        Dim deck1 As New Deck
        Console.WriteLine("Test: " & deck1.cards(2).face)
    End Sub

    Class Card
        Public face As String
        Sub New()
            face = "Blank"
        End Sub
    End Class

    Class Deck
        Public cards(51) As Card
    End Class

Answer 1

Yes, when you create an array in .NET, every element of the array is set to the default value of the element type - which is null/Nothing for classes.

You need to populate the array before you use it (or expect it to be full of null references).

Note that this would have behaved exactly the same way in C#.

EDIT: As no-one's actually posted population code that would work yet, here it is:

Class Deck
    Public cards(51) As Card

    Public Sub New()
        For i As Integer = 0 To cards.Length-1
            cards(i) = New Card()
        Next
    End Sub
End Class

Answer 2

You need to do some sort of

For Each currentItem As String in Me.face
 currentItem = "Blank"
End

Apologies if the syntax of the for-each is off, I'm a C# guy normally. But the basic issue is that you haven't initialized each element of the array.